This article explores the economic, agricultural and sociocultural aspects of the booming acai fruit industry in Amazonia, and with ample data, illustrates the rural-urban continuum underlying the fruit’s production, transaction, processing and consumption. Ethnographic accounts, archives and field experiments inform the authors' discussion on the regional and local forces shaping the fruit's economy. A methodological feat of this research analysis involved devising a strategy for coherent market analysis of a ten-year period of time characterized by five currency changes in Brazil. Factors contributing to the increased national and international demand for acai fruit are a strong rural-urban migration trend in the Amazon, the improvement of fruit conservation techniques and the development of electrical machines for processing the juice. Instead of leading to deforestation, this demand has led to changes in rural production systems based around intensive land management technology. Caboloclos, Brazil's largest native, non-Indian population in the Amazon, are the laborers and producers responsible for adapting their agroforestry regimes to match supply to demand, without the support of the government or external development agencies. The coboclo's apt response to the demands of an increasingly urbanized market provide an example of local production techniques as appropriate for and compatible with agricultural development. While land tenure issues and price negotiations are seen to limit the economic advancement of the coboclos supplying the fruit, the authors suggest that urban consumers and entrepreneurs could play a role in helping to dissolve the social inequalities that perpetuate this situation.

Prepared by Megan Glore