We harvest in cattle and goat pastures, where the mature Mimosa hostilis plants are almost the only shrubs and small trees left by the farmers, as it is an excellent fodder crop and provides shadow for the animals and also honey for their bees. The farmers do care about the Jurema and so we harvest only the horizontal roots, leaving the main taproots unharmed so the trees don't fall, nor die and keep on growing. Each five years it would be possible to go back to the same pastures to harvest from the same trees.
We select poor families to harvest the roots close to their homes each few days and clean well the inner root bark removing the other layers. The price we pay them is very fair and enables the poor families to recover quick from there past debts and some where able already to build a new house. These families do earn three or four times more then other families and able in this way to send their children to school each day and some child labour is stopped by you buying this product. The owners of the pastures receive a fair share also and are happy too to earn some extra.
The profit goes mainly to the development our fair trade production chain of cashew nuts. The local farmers will receive 35% more for there good raw nuts and the processing families will be supplied all year round. Untill now gigantic factories buy all cashew from our region and leave the small processing plants with only a small proportion of the local cashew - that will change now. For every kilogram of our MHRB sold more cashew can be stored to supply the processing families.
As part of our commitment to future green renewable energy and nutrition, part of the profit goes to research on viable uses of solar thermal energy to replace fuelwood to combat the deforestation of the Caatinga and on production systems of micro-algae for nutrition supplements to combat the nutrition problems in the semi-arid northeast. We are busy working on a better future; you can help by buying our products.
The pastures where we harvest do not receive any chemical pesticides as the grass and herbs grow naturally during the rainy season and pests are naturally controlled by the six month dry period. Also during processing no chemicals, in fact no product at all is used.
The cleaned inner root bark is transported in boxes to the clean glass greenhouse which is well closed to avoid contamination of the product. The bark dries at 70% of shade for a few days and is grinded in clean machines to a fine powder, then filtered to remove the filler fibers and packed quick in plastic bags.
The fine logistic system of harvesting and processing small quantities a few times a week enables us to preserve well the functional components of the bark. By removing the filler fibers the final product becomes 30% more concentrated, so our product is in fact 130% pure inner root bark comparing to many other sources.
Please email us if you have any other enquiries about MHRB.