Price: 2 €per tree

Project Overview

Ketrawe is all about claiming the forest back from agriculture and cattle raising. Usually farmers are blamed for chopping down the forest to expand agricultural fields, so the task is to convince farmers that trees are their best allies instead of an enemy that occupies productive land and eats up their yields.
In that sense Ketrawe has developed and pioneered a unique planting system blending native and exotic to plant windshields in the amazon rainforest.
Those windshields are a fusion between windshields and traditional tree plantations, this model allows farmers to add value to their land, while they increase their agricultural yields and on top of that enhance water conditions, fertility and reduce erosion.
This system has worked beautifully and has proven to be a success story that is being widely adopted by many farmers.
The end product is better family income, less need to intervene the forest, and a positive carbon, water and social footprint. The key for success has been to balance out a profitable synergy between farmers, agriculture, trees and environment.

Project Impact

Genetic Recovery of endangered trees.

Species such as IPE, Curupau and others used to thrive in the Amazon basin, but most of them have been wiped out because they provide valuable hardwood. The problem is that most of the trees that survived have been left aside because they were not useful for wood due to different reasons such as low density, thin, weak, deformed, etc. Therefore most of the seeds used to reproduce those trees come from “depleted” trees that were left over causing a downslope in the natural genetics. What we do is to use seeds from the few trees that managed to survive loggers that have maintained their original genetics through time. That means that every tree we plant is a step forward in recovering the genetic value of endangered trees.

Soil recovery

Agricultural and cattle expansion has been a one of the main reason of deforestation, son now that trees have been removed there is nothing to stop the wind. Wind causes erosion and soil fertility is lost, forcing farmers to use more land to get the same yields as before. Using more land means losing more forest.
We plant trees that act as wind protection and nitrogen spreaders, so that we stop erosion and contribute to recover soil fertility whilst increasing agricultural yields and diminishing the need for new lands. We do that by taking land away from agriculture and turning it into a forest, in other words, the forest is gaining land at the expense of agriculture….. Isn’t that amazing?

Increasing household income in rural areas

Rural areas offer few job opportunities and the few employment opportunities are generally poorly paid and far away from decent. We produce jobs in rural areas for people who collect seeds, produce seedlings in greenhouses, planters, forest maintenance, etc. We also provide trees that can be used for livestock feed and human nutrition.

Women’s empowerment

Until very recently, women were left out of economic activities, making them totally dependent on their husbands or relatives.
We provide jobs for women in activities such as seed collection and greenhouse tasks.
In this way women can gain their economic independence.

How to visit the project

Visiting the project is very easy since it is located at a short driving distance of about 2 hour and 30 minutes from the nearest international airport, which in this case is Viru Viru International Airport (VVI) Following the GPS data provided in the web page anyone can drive to the planting site at any time of the year, but we would recommend to book with us a tour beforehand.