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The origins of the Nossa Fruits project with founder Damien Binois.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name is Damien, I'm 35, from Sarthe, and I founded Nossa Fruits in 2012. I'm passionate about food and nature, particularly tropical forests.
How did the Nossa project come about?
While studying in Brazil, I discovered acai, a small Amazonian berry with an original taste and many nutritional properties. I'd never heard of this fruit before, but in Brazil it's very popular.
What really caught my attention about this little fruit was the fact that almost all of its production comes from wild harvesting in the Amazon. As I'm passionate about cooking and the forest, I wanted to find out more and decided to do my Master's thesis on the production of this fruit.
So I went to Belém, in the Amazon delta, and stayed for a few weeks, meeting pickers, cooperatives, NGOs, researchers and companies. I fell in love with this region where nature is exuberant but threatened, and where the inhabitants are extremely friendly but live in great poverty.
I realized that acai, because it is an Amazonian plant, and because it contains impressive benefits, could help solve these 2 problems of the region: preserving the forest by giving it value, and bringing resources to the people who live there.
So I decided to try and introduce it to the French and develop a sustainable production chain.
Why are you so committed to protecting the environment in your own way?
My grandparents were small-scale farmers, so I was exposed at a very early age to the problems associated with food production and the related ecological issues. I grew up in the countryside, surrounded by forests, and my mother was a physics teacher who was very involved in sustainable development. So, from a very early age, I was aware of waste reduction, recycling, composting, etc. What's more, most of the fruit and vegetables we ate came from the garden. So the environment is a subject that's particularly close to my heart.
Secondly, like many young people my age, I want to contribute to a better world and have the greatest possible impact to improve it. Entrepreneurship seemed to me the best way, to show consumers that their purchases have an impact on the world, and not to depend on government institutions.
Two sentences to define this adventure?
The destruction of the Amazon rainforest has purely economic fundamentals: it's only by giving value to the forest that we'll be able to preserve it.
The French consumer, whose social and environmental conscience is far more developed than that of the Brazilian consumer, can contribute to the preservation of the Amazon by consuming products from its socio-biodiversity.
What does the future hold for you? Any future projects?
2023 is a new turning point for Nossa, as we are in the process of structuring our CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) team in Brazil.
This has 2 aims: Firstly, to ensure that our work in the Amazon does not generate social and environmental problems, in particular, to control the use of protection for harvesting, the preservation of biodiversity and the absence of deforestation. We want to go even further than the organic and fair trade certification standards we already have.
Secondly, to measure the positiveimpact we generate for traditional Amazonian populations and ecosystems: increased income for pickers, greater involvement of women, enrichment of biodiversity over increasing areas.
2024 will see the construction of our production site in Amazonia, which will create many local jobs.
Finally, what advice would you give to anyone else who wants to get involved in a project of this kind (whether it's an association or a business)?
For me, entrepreneurship is above all a question of self-confidence. It's this confidence that tells us we can change the world on our own small scale, and that makes us accept the risks inherent in such an adventure.
If you work on your self-confidence and have a meaningful idea, go for it. In the worst case scenario, you'll have learned a lot and met some incredible people!
Thanks to Basil Podcast