Rio Tinto Brasil (RTB) has established a community project to support job and income generation in Paracatu, site of the Morro do Ouro gold mine. RTB provides incentives to small and medium entrepreneurs.

A 2003 project helped a local agricultural community to progress from subsistence to a cash economy by producing vegetables for sale to the community and to the mine. RTB invested, together with the community, in a sustainable programme that would ensure a better income for the needy families, as well as lowering unemployment in the region.

The generation project supports the production of vegetables in the Santa Rita community initially involving 25 families during 24 months. RTB is providing appropriate equipment (tractor, plough, etc), an irrigation system, seeds, fertilisers and will hire engineering and agricultural technicians. The community will provide the land and labour.

Vegetable production will be made available to 75,000 potential consumers in the city two km away and consequently at a negligible freight cost. The catering service at the mine buys vegetables directly from the producers, thus giving incentive to the project and becoming an example to other companies in the region.

The target for the first year is production of about 10 tonnes of vegetables, to generate an income of about US$10,000. In the second year, with the addition of 25 community vegetable gardens and the introduction of technical support, it is intended to produce about 200 tonnes of vegetables to generate about US$200,000 in the community.