● TREES: Planting traditional crops of high value potential, creating breadfruit based agro-forests.
● TRAINING: Sharing best practices with farmers to optimize resilience, production, and sustainability.
● TRADE: Creating a reliable supply web between farmers and customers, plus an attractive rate of return for investors and collaborators.
Breadfruit Environmental Benefits
Breadfruit is a key part of traditional Pacific agroforestry systems, many of which were replaced by monocultures. The fast-growing, high yielding perennial trees bear fruit in just 3 to five years and continue producing for decades. Breadfruit also requires significantly less labor and inputs than crops like rice and wheat. Rebuilding tropical agroforestry systems is key to improving soil and watersheds, reducing CO2, offering climate change resilience to communities, and providing food and shelter to pollinators and seed dispersers.
Breadfruit Growing Practices
Agroforestry is a resilient, efficient and sustainable method used by our ancestors to maximize the way we grow, share and consume a diverse variety of food in the same space. Jungle Project promotes regenerative agroforestry as the model for smallholder farmer’s growing method to have future breadfruit-based agroforestry plantations. For now, it sources from wild harvest trees (that grow on the edge of farms, rivers and gardens), sourcing with the help of local fruit gatherers and supporting both with a traceability process to identify where the fruit comes from. It then processes with three processing partners and the support of refrigerated transportation.
Breadfruit Social Impact
Researchers believe that the cultivation of Breadfruit trees in the tropics has the potential to drastically mitigate hunger and malnutrition. A percent of the revenue from each product sold goes directly to sustain the Jungle Project’s social program, which includes planting more trees, training more farmers, and connecting with more fair trade. Direct social impact benefits include economic support for smallholder farmers, using fruit that would otherwise become waste, nutrition support for farmers communities, and supporting farmers with organic certification processes.
Breadfruit Benefits
Breadfruit is a great source of complex carbohydrates, fiber, and minerals, including potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese, and zinc. It also provides B vitamins, niacin, thiamine, and Vitamin C. It is also gluten-free and a complete protein, containing all essential amino acids.
Key Uses for the flour: Use as a base for a wide range of gluten free dishes, like pancakes, pizza/pie crusts, lavash, cookies, crackers, pastas, thickening agent in sauces, and soups.
It can also substitute up to 15% of wheat flour to add its nutrients to the mix without affecting the sensorial results of the recipe. With around 65% starches, it works well with other flours with more density. It has a high absorbability quality to be considered. Since it has a very fine and fluffy texture, which increases it’s volume, handle delicately to avoid the flour from rising in the air. Store in a cool, dry place out of direct sunlight. Its shelf life is 18 months in original sealed packaging.
Rebuilding our food chain
Jungle Project is literally growing a supply chain from the ground up. They plant breadfruit trees with farmers in Costa Rica and manufacture innovative breadfruit products. Since day one, their mission has been to build a community-based agroforestry model: planting trees, training farmers, and producing healthy and delicious products. Check out their latest product in partnership with Patagonia, Breadfruit Cracker by Jungle Foods.
The perennial supercarb that nourishes you and the planet.
Breadfruit can be ground into a fine, soft, gluten free flour that is rich in proteins and complex in carbohydrates and perfect for everything from pancakes to pastas. Currently, Jungle Project is the only large-scale source of breadfruit flour made in certified processing facilities. With just a few brands, restaurants, and other purchasers signing on to buy the flour and sponsoring farmers to plant more, breadfruit could soon be making an ecological splash on the global stage.
We believe that regenerative farming will help to preserve the quality of our soils and water and maintain the health of our rural and global communities.
“Jungle Project has shown us an infinite range of potential for agroforestry and the power of organization. The past generation has grown apart mainly due to lack of job opportunities in the area, but working with Jungle over the past years has revitalized our family ties through working the land together.”
– Farmer Pablo Salas (Pejivalle)
Goal: To plant millions of trees to feed billions of people.
Jungle Project’s mission has been to provide a community-based agroforestry model by planting trees, training farmers, and cultivating healthy and delicious products. Please help us spread the word and expand our mission of Trees, Training, and Trade!