The subsistence gardens - which belong to the women - are cleared in the galley forests or sloping land more or less distant from the villages, which are always located near small streams and on high spots, with a good view, preferably on the "plateau" (põpej) - on which the vegetation of the cerrado (srictu sensu) predominates. The men are responsible for the "broca" (pruning of the bushy vegetation), the felling of the trees and the planting of rice; the women participate in the sowing of the corn, manioc and other crops (broad beans, yams, beans, sweet potato, pumpkin, watermelon, peanuts, papaya, and bananas). In these forests, the soils are more clayish and rich in nutrients. The average garden size per domestic group is 1.5 hectares (or 0.5 hectares per nuclear family).

The Apinajé gardens do not differ from those observed among other South American indigenous groups - but they do differ considerably from those of the neighboring regional population. Whereas the gardens of the regional population favor rice and manioc, which are planted separately, the indigenous gardens have a certain appearance of chaos, with an association of a wide variety of species. Rice, corn and manioc are planted first, with short intervals of time (November/December) in between and intercalated over the whole extent of the garden; after, yams and sweet potatoes are planted in specific sectors (January); after the harvesting of the green corn (March), the broad beans, and the "climber" beans are planted next to the cornstalks which are left to dry; in the remaining ridges of the garden, pumpkins are planted and finally, papaya and bananas are distributed throughout the garden. The useful life of a garden is determined by the manioc cycle (9 to 10 months) and the banana cycle.

The Apinajé received as benefits of the agreement between the CVRD and the FUNAI (from 1982 to 1985), sophisticated agricultural tools and equipment. The "FUNAI" gardens cleared with this equipment have served, in the past more than today, to supply the Indigenous Post with a "surplus" (of rice basically) to meet its needs. The Indians on occasion received some part of this "surplus". Today, in the village of São José, gardens are still made using mechanized agriculture, but their production - subtracting the surplus from its costs - is distributed by the families of the village.

Meat is indispensable in the festivals and, these days, many villages rely on cattle meat - and not game - for the purpose of the great rituals. Hunting no longer has the attraction it once did for the younger generations, principally when it demands a greater effort due to the scarcity of animals. Game is being substituted by the raising of small animals (pigs and chickens), which causes constant conflicts among families, because these animals are set loose on the terrain of the village and it is not uncommon for "someone" to end up killing an animal which belongs to someone else.

The Apinajé villages situated on the south/northwest borders and connected with the São José Indigenous Post (Patizal, Cocalinho and São José itself), however, still have available a reasonable supply of game animals, despite the competition with clandestine hunters.

In general, hunting is done with shotguns and, in the past, with bow and arrow. The collective hunts (which today are carried out with the help of dogs and not utilizing fire, as in the past) are done in the dry season, the ideal time for the holding of the great rituals. The technique used in the individual hunt varies with the season of the year: in the "summer" (dry season), the preference is for the "wait" (which the Apinajé adopted from the regional White men); in the "winter" (the rains), when the tracks are more visible, the preference is for trailing the animal. The term that the Timbira employ for hunting activity is synonymous for "frighten" (ajahêr), which reinforces the supposition that they learned the technique of hunting by waiting from the regional population.

For the Timbira in general, the principal game animals are the following, in order of importance and gastronomic appreciation: deer (brockets, and field), tapir, armadillos (peba, china, true and leather-tail; the giant armadillo has disappeared), paca, cutia, anteaters (the small kind, for the striped anteater is ever more rare), quati, the capelão monkey, porcupine and rhea. The pigs (wild boars and peccaries) which once were abundant in the Apinajé area, principally in the forests of Ribeirão Grande, where the village of Patizal is located today, have practically disappeared. Among the Timbira, only the Apinajé eat the sloth, the tejú and the anaconda.

Like every hunter-gatherer group, the Apinajé have a real passion for hunting: they dream a lot of game and hunts and tell stories in details, on the patio at night, of the adventures of each hunter’s day; this is the moment when they exchange information on game animals, their wily habits, behavior, and even their individual characteristics.

The Apinajé also greatly appreciate fish, which still constitutes an important item as a substitute for game for individuals undergoing "restrictions" (persons in liminal states and, thus, under rigid food restrictions). Due to the scarcity of game, the villages situated to the northeast of the indigenous area fish almost daily.

Besides fishing with hook and line, they practice the "tinguizada", collective fishing expeditions done in the dry season in small streams with the use of plant poison, or tingui (a toxic plant that cuts the supply of oxygen in the water making the fish appear "drunk").

Gathering activities of the Apinajé include fruits, medicinal plants, and thatch for construction and the making of domestic utensils (basketry).

In general, one can say that the demarcation of part of the traditional area of the Apinajé contributed to diminishing their economic dependence on the surrounding society, and made the nearly total use of their territory according to the traditional ways possible once again as well as their abandonment of babaçu extractivism as the only way of getting money to acquire manufactured goods.

The Apinajé, today, have merely an incipient relation with the regional market. In other moments of their history, for example at the height of the extractivist cycle of babaçu, this insertion into the regional market was quite strong, coming to represent, in terms of the value produced in the indigenous area, something around US$ 30-40 thousand per month. Presently, the insertion of the Apinajé into the market takes place basically through the purchase of industrialized goods on the local market of Tocantinópolis with the money that the retired elderly people get from Social Security, or that the Indigenous Health Agents get from the National Health Foundation or indigenous teachers from the state or even the young men get through their occasional work on the ranches of the region. The babaçu nut no longer has, as it did in the past, an important role in the acquisition of manufactured goods.