Production, Exports and Quality Main Issues for South American Producers

Delegates and observers from the International Olive Council and other olive-oil-pro­duc­ing nations gath­ered at the Palace of San Martín in Buenos Aires recently to dis­cuss the prospects of the olive sec­tor in the Americas.

Delegates from South American nations, specif­i­cally Argentina, took cen­ter stage at the event, which fol­lowed a week of meet­ings for the 107^th ses­sion for the IOC’s Council of Members. Among the numer­ous top­ics being dis­cussed — includ­ing pro­duc­tion, exports and qual­ity — the idea of an Olive Coordination Board for the Americas caused a stir of excite­ment.

“We have a shared inter­est in and vision for olive oil pro­duc­tion across the Americas,” María Cavero Romaña, a direc­tor of Pro Oliva in Peru, said. She posited that this hypo­thet­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion would serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose to that of the IOC, but specif­i­cally for South American coun­tries.

The idea was met with enthu­si­asm by Mercedes Nimo, the National Director of Food and Beverages and Bio-econ­omy at Argentina’s Ministry of Agro Industry. She said it was an inter­est­ing idea since South American pro­duc­ers all have sim­i­lar prob­lems, goals and views of the sec­tor. The pro­posal has yet to be for­mally drafted or dis­cussed but could be a cru­cial step in the devel­op­ment of the South American olive oil sec­tor.

While she addressed the audi­ence, Nimo empha­sized the grow­ing impor­tance of agro-indus­tries, espe­cially olive oil, on the con­ti­nent. For her, expand­ing mar­ket share and increas­ing coop­er­a­tion between the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors are both keys for grow­ing the sec­tor.

“The biggest chal­lenge this sec­tor faces is strength­en­ing the pres­ence of our olive oil and table olives in inter­na­tional mar­kets,” she said. ​“We need to under­stand the needs of olive oil pro­duc­ers and the state must pro­vide solu­tions.”

Nimo praised the coop­er­a­tion that is already going on and pointed out that the gov­ern­ment and pri­vate sector’s joint influ­ence on increas­ing qual­ity has been work­ing. Last year, Argentina launched a ​“Made in Argentina” cam­paign, offer­ing rebates on import duties for Argentine agri­cul­tural exporters who achieved the qual­ity and sus­tain­abil­ity stan­dards set by the ini­tia­tive.

“More than one year into the cam­paign and we have seen a sig­nif­i­cant improve­ment of olive oil qual­ity,” she said. ​“This empha­sis on improv­ing qual­ity has increased our olive oil’s posi­tion­ing in the world.”

Another way in which Argentina is improv­ing qual­ity is by crack­ing down on fraud. Extra vir­gin and vir­gin olive oil qual­ity stan­dards have largely not been cod­i­fied into law in Argentina. But that is chang­ing.

“We are mak­ing efforts to update reg­u­la­tory efforts for olive oil,” Nimo said. Argentina is not alone. Delegates from both Chile and Brazil said that their coun­tries were work­ing hard to improve gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions per­tain­ing to qual­ity stan­dards as well.

“As of 2014, the Ministry of Agriculture started demand­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers fol­low cer­tain para­me­ters,” Fabio Florêncio Fernandes, the Director for the Inspection of Plant Products at Brazil’s Ministry of Agriculture, said. Since then, Brazil has invested in three lab­o­ra­to­ries to test olive oil and requires all pro­duc­ers to pro­vide sam­ples.

All olive oil exports now leav­ing Brazil are required to meet the government’s new min­i­mum olive oil stan­dards and receive a cer­tifi­cate of ori­gin. The con­se­quences of fail­ing to do so are stark, Florêncio Fernandes warned.

“Those [pro­duc­ers who] do not com­ply will have their prod­ucts seized and the com­pany must pay a fine,” he said. ​“The Ministry now checks and ver­i­fies the ori­gin of all olive oil prod­ucts that are both exported and imported. We are also work­ing with the fed­eral police to do so.”

Part of the solu­tion, Florêncio Fernandes said, is work­ing closely with the Spanish and Portuguese com­pa­nies that are export­ing olive oil to Brazil and mak­ing sure they are in com­pli­ance.

The other part of the solu­tion is tough enforce­ment. In 2016, the Brazilian gov­ern­ment began a qual­ity con­trol cam­paign — code­name Operation Father Christmas. Federal police across 27 states col­lected 480 bot­tles of olive oil from 164 dif­fer­ent brands. About 10 per­cent were found to be fraud­u­lent or non­com­pli­ant.

The results of the raid were pub­lished on the Ministry of Agriculture’s web­site in an effort to name and shame those pro­duc­ers who had failed to meet the qual­ity stan­dards.

Meanwhile, Javiera Pefaur Lepe, who among other things is an indus­trial crops spe­cial­ist for the Chilean Ministry of Agriculture, admit­ted that there are no legal qual­ity stan­dards for extra vir­gin or vir­gin olive oil in Chile. At the moment, the Ministry of Agriculture is work­ing on devel­op­ing vol­un­tary stan­dards and from their cre­at­ing legal stan­dards.

“We are devel­op­ing qual­ity stan­dards that are vol­un­tary, but it is a first step for the sec­tor,” Pefaur Lepe said. ​“We believe this will be a use­ful first step for the cre­ation of a law, which would be manda­tory.”

In order to cre­ate effec­tive leg­is­la­tion, she believes that the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors must con­tinue to work together. She pointed to the progress that the Chilean olive oil sec­tor has made when the two work together.

“There is strong growth in Chilean olive oil pro­duc­tion capac­ity,” she said. ​“For a coun­try as small as ours, this growth is com­mend­able.”

While efforts to improve qual­ity con­tinue, Chilean pro­duc­ers con­tinue to make the sec­tor increas­ingly effi­cient and estab­lish and main­tain new export mar­kets. In doing so, she believes Chile will soon be able to com­pete with larger and more estab­lished olive oil pro­duc­ers.

“Chile’s large num­ber of free trade agree­ments allow our olive oil pro­duc­ers to enter many mar­kets,” Pefaur Lepe said. ​“We seek to con­tinue to access new mar­kets and main­tain our pres­ence in already estab­lished mar­kets.”

Ultimately, Nimo believes that Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Peru can­not grow their sec­tors in iso­la­tion. As European coun­tries have done, she believes South American coun­tries will need to work together to fos­ter the growth of the sec­tor across the con­ti­nent.

“South American pro­duc­ers must work together and with the IOC to inform con­sumers and pro­mote poli­cies to grow our respec­tive olive oil pro­duc­tion sec­tors inter­na­tion­ally,” she said. ​“This is the spirit with which we want to pro­mote Argentine and the rest our continent’s olive oil pro­duc­tion.”