Recent News

Feb­ru­ary seems light years away from this moment, but there was a time, a few weeks ago, when the threat of the coro­n­avirus seemed very dis­tant in the South­ern Hemi­sphere, and all of Brazil’s inter­est was in the Car­ni­val.

While most Brazil­ians were out in the streets cel­e­brat­ing, the olive har­vest was get­ting under­way in Rio Grande do Sul.

Pro­duc­ers in the largest olive-grow­ing region of the coun­try were in the process of press­ing and fil­ter­ing their first batches of extra vir­gin olive oil for the year. The first exports of the sea­son were also recorded, headed for the United States.

Rio Grande do Sul is the south­ern­most state in the coun­try and is mostly home to sprawl­ing fields of soy­beans and rice. Bor­der­ing the pampa gaucha of Uruguay and Argentina, the region boasts some of the best cat­tle graz­ing lands on the con­ti­nent.

The his­tory of olive oil, how­ever, in this long-time agri­cul­tural region is very recent. Twenty years ago, Willy Haas, then an exec­u­tive of the O’Globo chain, wanted to invest in the Cacho­e­rias area. He had a hunch that olive trees might grow well in the pampa gaucha.

Back then, there were no olive oil pro­duc­ers in Brazil, and the agri­cul­tural com­pany that advised him was not enthu­si­as­tic about the idea. They thought there was no way that olive trees could thrive in the region.

In spite of their reser­va­tions, Haas went ahead with his plan and two decades later ful­filled his dream: He now has almost 200 acres of olive trees and is build­ing a mill.

Haas serves as a bit of a barom­e­ter for the country’s entire olive sec­tor. Since he planted his first trees to the present moment, Latin America’s largest coun­try has devel­oped a small but boom­ing olive oil indus­try.

He now hopes to launch his new brand this year, along with his daugh­ter, Glenda, who is in charge of the project.

While Haas was one of the first to bring olive trees to Rio Grande do Sul, Oli­vas do Sul was the pio­neer­ing olive oil pro­ducer that defied all the pre­dic­tions. Begin­ning pro­duc­tion in 2008, the com­pany put Brazil on the world olive oil map.

Fol­low­ing Oliva do Sul’s exam­ple, sev­eral other entre­pre­neurs decided to invest, and today, the region is home to the vast major­ity of Brazil­ian olive oil pro­duc­tion, which remains very small.

Over­all, Brazil pro­duced 230,000 liters in 2019, with more than 60 per­cent of the yield com­ing from the groves of Rio Grande do Sul.

Of those 230,000 liters, Pros­per­ato, the country’s largest olive oil pro­ducer, is respon­si­ble for roughly one-third.

Located in the Capaçava do Sul region of Rio Grande do Sul, the Mar­che­tti fam­ily decided some years ago to expand their oper­a­tions from the nurs­ery busi­ness to other crops.

Olives were among the crops that piqued their inter­est but were thought to be too dif­fi­cult to sell at the time. Despite this, the Mar­che­t­tis decided to buy an orchard in order to demon­strate that olive oil could be pro­duced in Brazil and thus attract new cus­tomers to their main busi­ness.

Their grand exper­i­ment yielded a Best in Class Award at the 2019 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Com­pe­ti­tion.

These days, the mill is run by Rafael, one of the sons, who at the age of 25 man­ages every­thing with ded­i­ca­tion and pro­fes­sion­al­ism, incor­po­rat­ing tech­niques and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tions that he has seen in dif­fer­ent parts of the world.

With 65,000 liters pro­duced in 2019, a record-high har­vest, Pros­per­ato remains the coun­try’s largest pro­ducer by a wide mar­gin.

This year, Mar­che­tti thinks Pros­per­ato will pro­duce about 20,000 liters, closer to their num­bers from other years.

“It is a lit­tle frus­trat­ing, due to the spec­tac­u­lar flow­er­ing,” Mar­che­tti said. ​“We believe that the Novem­ber rains affected us, or also the bian­nual [off-year].”

“Every­thing is too recent to have a pat­tern,” he added. ​“While we plant and pro­duce, we are also writ­ing his­tory.”

Along with being the country’s largest pro­ducer, Pros­per­ato has also become the country’s first olive oil exporter, send­ing some of its fresh extra vir­gin olive oil to the United States.

“With the Best in Class Award we received at NYIOOC last year, we caught the atten­tion of an Amer­i­can com­pany,” he said. ​“They came to visit us and now it is pos­si­ble to buy Pros­per­ato online in the U.S.”

How­ever, for the time being, most of Prosperato’s pro­duc­tion is sold domes­ti­cally at the company’s own shop, Empo­rio Pros­per­ato.

Sit­u­ated next to the olive groves and on the high­way con­nect­ing Porto Ale­gre with the Argen­tine-Uruguayan bor­der, the store offers a selec­tion of local and imported prod­ucts to enjoy with their extra vir­gin olive oil.

“We still have the great chal­lenge of edu­cat­ing con­sumers about this prod­uct, but we con­tinue our work,” Mar­che­tti said.