In Santa Clara, Pastaza, Ecuador, Erick Vargas, founder of Yunac, is turning locally sourced plantains into new market opportunities, with support from Fundación Pachamama’s Pacha Emprende program.

Fundación Pachamama, Pachamama Alliance’s sister organization in Ecuador, works alongside Indigenous peoples and local communities to protect the Amazon rainforest. Through initiatives like Pacha Emprende, Fundación Pachamama also supports local entrepreneurs in building businesses that strengthen regional economies and create opportunities rooted in the Amazon’s natural abundance.

Pacha Emprende is a bioeconomy entrepreneurship program that helps Amazonian businesses strengthen their products, develop business skills, and connect with new markets. By addressing practical barriers to growth, the program helps entrepreneurs build stronger businesses while contributing to a future in which people and the living forest can thrive together.

Building a Business Rooted in the Amazon

In Ecuador’s Amazon, the forest sustains far more than biodiversity. It provides the foundation for local food systems, cultural traditions, and livelihoods that have supported communities for generations.

For Erick, that connection is reflected in Yunac’s products. By transforming locally sourced plantains into packaged snacks, his business creates opportunities to bring regional foods to new customers while working with local producers. Yunac’s relationships with farming families and producer organizations, including the Jury Jury Kawsay Association in Arajuno, highlight the importance of local partnerships in sustaining Amazonian food systems. By bringing these foods to wider markets, businesses like Yunac can also celebrate the region’s agricultural diversity and the people who help sustain it.

But turning a local product into a growing business requires more than a good idea. Entrepreneurs must navigate challenges ranging from product preservation and packaging to regulatory requirements and access to new markets. Addressing these obstacles can make an important difference in whether a small business is able to grow and reach more customers.

For Yunac, packaging was one of those challenges.

Packaging for the Next Stage of Growth

Yunac's new product packaging. 

Yunac’s original transparent packaging offered limited protection for its plantain chips, creating challenges for product preservation and storage in the Amazon’s warm climate. The business also needed packaging that could better support its product presentation and distribution.

Through Pacha Emprende, Yunac received support to improve its packaging, transitioning from transparent bags to metallized packaging better suited to protecting its plantain chips.

This seemingly small change represents an important step in a business’s development. Better packaging can help preserve product quality, strengthen a product’s presentation, and make it easier for a local enterprise to meet market requirements and pursue new commercial opportunities.

For Yunac, the support illustrates how targeted business development can help Amazonian entrepreneurs move beyond the initial stages of production and build a stronger foundation for growth.

Why Supporting Amazonian Enterprises Matters

Yunac’s story is part of a broader vision for the Amazon—one in which economic opportunity does not have to come at the expense of the forest.

Across the region, local entrepreneurs are developing businesses around foods, ingredients, and other products connected to Amazonian biodiversity and traditional knowledge. When these enterprises succeed, they can create opportunities for producers, strengthen local economies, and help keep value within the communities connected to the land.

This work aligns with Fundación Pachamama’s broader commitment to a bioeconomy that values the living forest. Rather than treating the Amazon solely as a source of extractable resources, a bioeconomy approach recognizes the potential of thriving ecosystems to sustain livelihoods, cultural identity, and locally led innovation.

Supporting entrepreneurs is one part of this larger effort. By helping businesses strengthen their products and reach new markets, Pacha Emprende contributes to an economic landscape in which communities can build prosperity while maintaining their connections to the forest.

For Pachamama Alliance and Fundación Pachamama, this work is about more than helping individual businesses grow. It is about supporting the people, relationships, and local economies that can contribute to a living Amazon—one where the forest remains a source of life, knowledge, and possibility for generations to come.