Agricultural Entrepreneur Has Sights Set on Brazil’s Olive Oil Sector

One of the most sig­nif­i­cant Brazilian regions for high-qual­ity wine pro­duc­tion is also home to some of the best extra vir­gin olive oil in the world.

Campanha Gaúcha is located in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil’s south­ern­most state and its largest olive oil pro­ducer by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin.

Azeite Batalha is among Brazil’s top pro­duc­ers, grow­ing olive trees on more than 500 hectares on the 31^st par­al­lel.

The company’s Black and Intenso brands, both medium blends, earned two Gold Awards at the 2022 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition, the world’s largest olive oil-qual­ity con­test, for the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year.

“[It’s] a con­fir­ma­tion that we are on the right track, which is why we sub­mit our extra vir­gin olive oils to the experts,” owner Luiz Eduardo Batalha told Olive Oil Times.

“We feel very proud that our olive oils are rec­og­nized as among the best in the world. And that is even more rel­e­vant in Brazil, which does not have a long tra­di­tion of olive grow­ing cul­ture,” he added. ​“Eight years after our first har­vest, we have col­lected more than 40 inter­na­tional awards.”

Batalha noted that these awards have served as an inde­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion of their high-qual­ity work and also improved the company’s pro­file among its cus­tomers.

Before plant­ing his first olive trees, Batalha had a long track record as a busi­ness­man with var­i­ous tourism, man­u­fac­tur­ing and agri­cul­ture ven­tures.

In 1973, the Batalha fam­ily bought its first farm in the state of São Paulo to start a cof­fee plan­ta­tion. They later started to breed Mangalarga horses and exported them to Europe and the United States.

By 1976, Batalha decided to try his hand at tourism, build­ing a resort. A year later, he founded a con­struc­tion and allot­ment busi­ness and then launched a suc­cess­ful cat­tle ranch­ing enter­prise in Minas Gerais and Mato Grosso.

“We have been in the agri­cul­ture busi­ness for five decades but only began to grow olive trees in Pinheiro Machado in 2010,” Batalha said.

Pinheiro is one of the old­est set­tle­ments on the south­ern edge of Campanha Gaúcha. It is known for its hilly land­scape and tem­per­ate oceanic cli­mate, with aver­age tem­per­a­tures between 7 ºC and 28 ºC.

“This area is known to have one of the best Brazilian ter­roirs and is renowned for its vines,” Batalha said. ​“Here, we found a per­fect cli­mate and soil to grow olive trees.”

Batalha invested in mod­ern machin­ery in his quest for qual­ity and founded state-of-the-art olive oil mills.

“We imported the equip­ment from Pieralisi, in Italy, which is con­sid­ered among the best in the world,” he said. Batalha added that he founded two sep­a­rate farms, each with its own mill, to reduce the time between har­vest and trans­for­ma­tion.

“Thanks to those two mills, we have been able to pro­mote olive tree cul­ti­va­tion in the region while also guar­an­tee­ing other local farm­ers could count on a high-qual­ity mill to trans­form their olives,” he said.

“We are very focused on the devel­op­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for the region,” Batalha added. ​“We can count on a great rela­tion­ship with the other farm­ers and some ongo­ing insti­tu­tional part­ner­ships with the [state-owned] Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and some uni­ver­si­ties whose researchers con­duct tests and analy­ses in our olive groves.”

“In 2021, we were respon­si­ble for pro­cess­ing approx­i­mately half of the olive oil pro­duced in Brazil,” he con­tin­ued.

In the 2021/22 crop year, Brazil pro­duced an esti­mated 140 tons of olive oil, with 90 tons pro­duced in Rio Grande do Sul.

Batalha’s farm com­prises approx­i­mately 140,000 olive trees, mainly of the Arbequina, Arbosana, Koroneiki, Picual, Coratina and Frantoio vari­eties.

“We con­stantly visit the groves and keep an eye on the trees’ needs in terms of soil qual­ity, spray­ing, prun­ing, spac­ing and all other farm­ing aspects that might affect the trees,” Batalha said.

Most of the olive trees are rel­a­tively young. As a result, yields are expected to increase in the future. Batalha added that pro­duc­tion vol­umes increase as he becomes a bet­ter olive farmer and learns more about the trees.

“We expect 2023 to be our pro­duc­tion record year,” he said. ​“We have 11-year-old olive trees pro­duc­ing up to 120 kilo­grams of olives.”

The aver­age processed olive oil yield in recent years for Azeite Batalha has been 12 per­cent.

“Olive yields vary sig­nif­i­cantly depend­ing on the cul­ti­var,” he said. ​“As our focus is extra vir­gin olive oil qual­ity, we see a pro­gres­sive improve­ment due to bet­ter har­vest­ing tech­niques, equip­ment set­tings and knowl­edge and train­ing of our employ­ees.”

“For instance, at the mill, we always carry out pre­ven­tive main­te­nance and clean­ing of all our machines and equip­ment,” Batalha added. ​“We have a qual­ity tech­ni­cian ded­i­cated to ana­lyz­ing and main­tain­ing the olive oil pro­cess­ing, stor­age and pack­ag­ing facil­i­ties in per­fect con­di­tion.”

Every cul­ti­var is har­vested accord­ing to its spe­cific needs, and the result­ing olive oil is stored in vari­ety-spe­cific stain­less steel tanks.

According to Batalha, olive oil con­sump­tion in Brazil will con­tinue to rise. ​“We have seen sig­nif­i­cant changes in the past few years,” he said. ​“People are becom­ing more aware of the health ben­e­fits of extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion, and start­ing to look for higher qual­ity prod­ucts” based on its organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics, col­ors, aro­mas and fla­vors.

“It is an ongo­ing process,” Batalha added. ​“It will take some time for Brazilians to cor­rectly dif­fer­en­ti­ate good and bad olive.”

“In the last cou­ple of years, we have been pro­mot­ing many tast­ings at the points of sale, and we are soon going to launch an olive oil blog on our web­site,” he con­tin­ued. ​“We also pro­mote vis­its from groups to our olive groves mills, where we orga­nize work­shops on the olive oil pro­duc­tion process and offer tast­ings.”

While the impacts of cli­mate change are among his con­cerns, the Brazilian farmer said his farm is well-placed to adapt since the trees are very young, at least in the short term.

“If we con­tinue to dete­ri­o­rate our envi­ron­ment and, as a con­se­quence, our cli­mate, our olive trees will end up suf­fer­ing from those changes,” he said.

Ever the entre­pre­neur­ial spirit, Batalha decided to face the chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change by cre­at­ing a new forestry project to pro­duce wood pel­lets for use as bio­mass fuel.

“We have to focus on things we can con­trol,” he said. ​“At the moment, our biggest chal­lenge is to keep the trees healthy and pro­ceed with har­vest­ing oper­a­tions as quickly as pos­si­ble, har­mo­nized to the mill capac­i­ties.”

“Our focus is always on improv­ing, on train­ing our peo­ple, bet­ter our equip­ment and upgrad­ing our tech­niques,” Batalha con­cluded.