Israel Martins Araujo

This ethnographic research explores how diverse ways of cultivating and thinking about the environment come together to create and sustain agroforestry systems at the agricultural frontier in Tomé-Açu, Pará, northern Brazil. As expanding monocultures increasingly displace forests, small producers in agrarian-reform settlements persist with diversified associated planting – a practice rooted in longstanding knowledge among quilombola, Indigenous, and ribeirinho communities but now influenced by new sustainability agendas, such as CIFOR-ICRAF’s ARCA initiative. Over twelve months of fieldwork in Tropicália and Miritipitanga, I examine: How do technical practices and environmental notions combine to create and maintain agroforests? What knowledge, skills, and relationships are mobilized in these collaborative processes? How do actors, including producers, technicians, and institutions, negotiate the values and meanings attached to agroforestry? By analyzing agroforestry as a field where technique, morality, and politics converge, this research shows how global “green economy” interventions foster transformation and mobilize different values, reshaping local agency and identity. The project contributes to anthropological debates on technique, sustainability, and value, the translation of diverse agendas, and the multifaceted ways in which life is conceived and cultivated in Amazonia and beyond by demonstrating how technical practices are inextricably linked to moral evaluation and forms of life.