The 1,000-Member Co-Op Taking on The Challenging Terrain of Northern Portugal

Summary

The Agricultural Cooperative of Olive Growers of Murça (CAOM) won two Silver Awards at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition for their Azeite Porca de Murça brand. CAOM, which has been unit­ing farm­ers in Trás-os-Montes since 1956, focuses on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil and edu­cat­ing con­sumers about its unique ben­e­fits and qual­i­ties.

About 1,000 Portuguese farm­ers cel­e­brated news of two awards at the 2024 NYIOOC World Olive Oil Competition.

The farm­ers are mem­bers of the Agricultural Cooperative of Olive Growers of Murça (CAOM), which earned Silver Awards for a medium-inten­sity blend and del­i­cate Cordovil at the World Competition.

“Our goal in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the NYIOOC was to inform peo­ple about the extra­or­di­nary qual­ity of our Azeite Porca de Murça brand and the work behind such excel­lence,” said Francisco António Vilela Ribeiro, the coop­er­a­tive’s chair­man of the board of direc­tors.

“NYIOOC is a con­test with very demand­ing analy­sis cri­te­ria and great feed­back,” he added. ​“There are many national and inter­na­tional con­tests, but win­ning in New York is spe­cial.”

While CAOM has con­sis­tently achieved suc­cess at the World Competition since 2020, the coop­er­a­tive has been unit­ing a large com­mu­nity of farm­ers in the north­east­ern Portuguese region of Trás-os-Montes since 1956.

“It started in the 1990s when the Cooperative focused on pro­duc­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

“The search for high qual­ity was the answer to the chal­lenges of this region and the higher costs asso­ci­ated with the moun­tain­ous envi­ron­ment, the exten­sive orchards and the dry­land farm­ing prac­tices,” he added.

The coop­er­a­tive now sells more than 500,000 liters of its Azeite Porca de Murça brand nation­ally and inter­na­tion­ally.

None of the almost 1,000 mem­bers of the coop­er­a­tive have irri­gated olive groves, all of which are tra­di­tion­ally spaced. CAOM esti­mated that, on aver­age, these grow­ers incur three times the expenses of the aver­age super-inten­sive grower.

These con­di­tions have led CAOM to develop alter­na­tive rev­enue streams, includ­ing its ded­i­cated museum, the start­ing point for the cooperative’s guided tours.

“The main chal­lenge for these pro­duc­ers is to edu­cate new con­sumers about the ben­e­fits of con­sum­ing vir­gin olive oils instead of other veg­etable oils,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

“Extra vir­gin olive oil is unique, and no food or med­i­cine can replace it,” he added. ​“It is cru­cial for our health. We need more con­sumers who are bet­ter informed about this.”

Valuing the unique rela­tion­ship between the land and the farm­ers’ work is cru­cial for the coop­er­a­tive’s present and future.

“With higher pro­duc­tion costs, giv­ing our work value means main­tain­ing areas that are already depop­u­lated and risk being aban­doned,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

The cooperative’s olive groves are spread across an 189-square-kilo­me­ter area in the Murça munic­i­pal­ity. CAOM focuses on the four local vari­eties – Cordovil, Cobrançosa, Madural, and Verdeal – included in the Trás-os-Montes Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion awarded by the European Union.

According to the tech­ni­cal sum­mary pub­lished by the European Commission, Trás-os-Montes PDO extra vir­gin olive oil is bal­anced, with aro­mas and fla­vors of fresh fruit and some­times almonds. The oil is notably sweet, green, bit­ter and spicy, char­ac­ter­is­tics that make it stand out from other olive oils in the coun­try.

“The olive oil we pro­duce has a very spe­cific iden­tity – its ter­roir – because Murça is the epi­cen­ter of the three micro­cli­mates of the Transmontana region: Terra Quente, Terra Fria and Terra de Montanha,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

“This means we have three regions with very dis­tinct cli­mates, rang­ing from the nar­row val­leys of the Tua and Tinhela rivers, with olive groves bor­der­ing the vine­yards of the Douro demar­cated region, to the more moun­tain­ous areas where olive groves com­pete with chest­nut cul­ti­va­tion,” he added.

Vilela Ribeiro noted that ​“the coop­er­a­tive has been a pio­neer” due to its ver­ti­cally inte­grated con­trol of the entire pro­duc­tion chain over the past 30 years, ensur­ing that every step from har­vest to pack­ag­ing is done accord­ing to the high­est stan­dards.

The com­mu­nal olive mill, which was started by the coop­er­a­tive mem­bers when it was founded, has been the lynch­pin of the oper­a­tion.

“It became key to the econ­omy of an inland munic­i­pal­ity of Portugal, with a chal­leng­ing topog­ra­phy for farm­ing,” Vilela Ribeiro said. ​“It also allows small olive pro­duc­ers to scale up, which would oth­er­wise be impos­si­ble.”

According to CAOM, the coop­er­a­tive demon­strates the world-class qual­ity of tra­di­tional olive farm­ing because of its cul­ture inspired by com­mu­nity and team­work.

“The fact that our mem­bers truly nur­ture a coop­er­a­tive spirit of sol­i­dar­ity and shar­ing made us the only case in Portugal where the val­u­a­tion of what they pro­duce is not only based on the olive yield but on the actual qual­ity of the fruit itself,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

“By look­ing at the fruits, we can also decide when it is the best time to start har­vest­ing,” he added. ​“Thanks to our mod­ern olive mill, we can sched­ule the work to deliver the fruit to us in less than 24 hours from har­vest­ing.”

The weather is not always on the grow­ers’ side, though.

“This year, due to cli­mate change and extreme weather phe­nom­ena expe­ri­enced through­out the Mediterranean region, as well as an autumn with lots of rain, pro­duc­tion was lower and more dif­fi­cult,” Vilela Ribeiro said.

“On aver­age, we need 1.5 kilo­grams more olives to pro­duce the same liter of olive oil,” he added. ​“When com­pared to the pre­vi­ous sea­son, pro­duc­tion was again low, with lower yields, which fur­ther impacted the total pro­duc­tion in the region.”

Looking ahead to the 2024/25 har­vest, Vilela Ribeiro said he also expects to face more chal­lenges.

“Extreme phe­nom­ena such as heavy rains, hail­storms or heat waves jeop­ar­dize both flow­er­ing and fruit set, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult to antic­i­pate any sce­nario for the next olive sea­son,” he said.