Red Gold in the Town of Villa Exaltación

Ten years ago, the people of Villa Exaltación didn’t think much of the small, shrubby trees covered with rust-colored, burr-like pods dotting the surrounding hills.

“We didn’t care about them very much. It was just a food coloring and sometimes women used it to color their lips,” says Maria Luisa Urquiola Vera (see photo on left of Vera), an annatto grower, as she bounces her seven-month-old boy on her lap. “The price for annatto was so low, we only cared about bananas and oranges.”

Now, the small, triangular, carmine-red annatto seed buried inside those tough pods bears the nickname “red gold,” and 62 families living in the small mountain village in the heart of the Yungas region are making big plans for their once-forgotten trees.

In 2004, with the support of a USAID/Bolivia Integrated Alternative Development (IAD) project implemented by ACDI/VOCA, members of the Villa Exaltation Ecological Producers’ Association - Asociación Integral de Productores Ecológicos de Villa Exaltación (AIPEAVE), exported their first shipment of the organically grown seed to Germany, which uses the natural dye extract called bixina in cheeses, sausages and textiles.

Since then, thanks to continued support from USAID/Bolivia through the Integrated Community Development Fund (ICDF), AIPEAVE has expanded from sporadic, semi-wild groves to 200 hectares of annatto trees and has been annually exporting 60 tons of the organically grown seeds to Germany. The association has also been selling the leaves to the United States as a natural remedy for heart and kidney problems and high blood pressure.

The price for 100 pounds of annatto shot from $2.50 in 1980 to $62 in 1997. Now, the price has stabilized at $32 per hundredweight (cwt.) for the seed and $25 per cwt. for the ground leaves.

“We have a stable price. Not low, not high,” Vera says. “We have a steady income. We just count the weight and we know how much money we’ll make.”

Annatto producers are able to export such large quantities of their product thanks to help from ACDI/VOCA through the USAID/Bolivia-funded Yungas Community Alternative Development Fund (YCADF) and subsequently the ICDF. The ICDF has helped farmers become certified organic in accordance with European standards. Certified organic products have a better and more stable market than non-organic products.

ACDI/VOCA also provided technical assistance to helped AIPEAVE members improve post-harvest management by constructing large drying patios and pens to store the pods and by providing machines designed to separate the seeds from of the pods and blow off husks. Seed extraction previously was done manually by crushing the pods with bare feet.

Striving to maximize the efficiency of the annatto threshing and winnowing process, innovative AIPEAVE members experimented with and modified the donated machinery, eventually perfecting a model of their own, which they are now producing and selling for about $1,300.

Juan Urquiola, Vera’s father and AIPEAVE member, showing off the machines at a local products fair in Caranavi, explains to a small crowd that the newest models are extra gentle to the precious coloring covering the seeds.

“Go ahead, put your hand on the other side, see how well the fan works,” Urquiola spins the fly wheel on the blower and two or three curious onlookers stick out their hands to feel the breeze. The impressive-looking, bright-red machines quickly draw attention at the fair and people jostle for position to spin the wheel themselves.

“There’s a demand for the machines. They can do in one-half hour what we did in one day with our feet,” says Urquiola. “We want everything local. Our own machines, our own product,” he says. Vera explains that without the help of USAID/Bolivia and ACDI/VOCA, the annatto project never would have expanded so quickly and been such a resounding success.

The annatto machinery team created five new jobs this year, hiring several local people to work in their Caranavi factory. They expect to sell between 200 and 500 of the threshing and winnowing machines in a year, generating a hefty supplemental income to revenues from the export of annatto to international markets.

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