Until the 19th Century, the Apiaká opened their roças (planting fields) by clearing the forest with stone axes tied to a wooden handle, and had the reputation of being hardworking farmers who also lived on hunting and fishing. Currently the Apiaká use sickles, machetes, steel axes and chain saws to open their roças; they plant mostly cassava and maize. They also cultivate rice, bananas, yams, pineapple and primrose malanga, as well as dozens of fruit trees. Their agricultural production is complemented with hunting, fishing and gathering from the surrounding forest. They also raise domestic animals.

The Apiaká are expected to distribute the product of their hunting and fishing in proportion to the abundance and the degree of kinship. Items from the local commerce are acquired with what they earn in exchange for payments from jobs they take in nearby farms and/or from the sale of arts and crafts and of rubber. For a long time they have been regularly buying salt, sugar, coffee, clothes, textiles, soap, firearms, ammunition, fishing gear, kerosene, steel objects and occasionally radios and battery-powered tape players.

Work in agriculture is shared by the husband, the wife and, to a lesser extent, smaller children as well. Men are also in charge of slashing the forest and burning it. The entire family carries out planting, weeding and harvesting. And whereas hunting is an exclusively male activity, everyone fish. Household chores, such as cooking, as well as the care for children, are women activities. Men build houses and make canoes, oars, bows, arrows and baskets. Women are in charge of making other crafts for domestic use and for their sale.

The concept of land property does not exist among the Apiaká. The individual who wishes to plant a roça informs his intention to the others, with whom he decides its limits. He considers himself the owner of his roça, even after the harvest is finished. He may cede it to someone else then, but once he has abandoned it, it may be taken by whoever wants it. The production belongs to those who planted the field; occasionally part of it may be given to someone who needs and asks for a “loan”. There is also the idea of possession over trees in the forest, once a man informs his intention of using it to built a canoe, make a prop for his house or else shows interest for the fruits or the honey from a beehive clinging to the trunk. Each hunter and fisherman uses certain pathways and places more often than others, but that is not recognized as ownership, although they are recognized as “someone’s pathway (or place)”.

As for latex extraction from the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis), each Apiaká is the owner of his estrada (pathway), that is, the pathway that gives access to a set of rubber trees, usually between 50 and 100 of them. The use of the estrada may be ceded to another individual.