Brazilian Politics: 10, Olive Oil: 0

Listening to the Olive Oil Times pod­cast (sea­son 3, episode 2) was a staunch reminder of how a charged polit­i­cal atmos­phere can ham­per niche, yet promis­ing indus­tries.

During the inter­view, Rafael Marchetti, pro­ducer of olive oil for his fam­i­ly’s com­pany, Tecnoplanta that offers turnkey invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties in Brazil’s olive oil sec­tor, reit­er­ated that the cur­rent polit­i­cal and eco­nomic crises plagu­ing the coun­try has stymied growth in his once bur­geon­ing busi­ness.

This came as lit­tle sur­prise to me. Over the past six to eight months it has become appar­ent, as I stroll the streets of north­east­ern Brazil, that more infor­mal street ven­dors are sell­ing their goods. To help sup­ple­ment an already insuf­fi­cient min­i­mum wage (R$880 per month, or roughly $263 at the cur­rent exchange rate) peo­ple sell corn, pop­corn, candy, French fries, and other ran­dom food items and tid­bits to make ends meet. Olive oil? This condi­ment and cook­ing oil does­n’t make the best street hus­tle in tough times.

Curtis Cord, the pub­lisher of Olive Oil Times, began inter­view­ing Marchetti with a smooth ​“So, just to break the ice, how do you like President Trump?” Not a con­ven­tional way to open a pod­cast dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­tion in Brazil. However, the polit­i­cal cri­sis in Brazil is not rad­i­cally dis­sim­i­lar to what tran­spired in the 2016 U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and has much to do with the one-year decline in olive oil sales in the coun­try.

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Bear in mind that the indus­try was still recov­er­ing from a 2013 Proteste study that con­cluded that only 8 out of 19 com­mer­cial­ized extra vir­gin olive oil brands in Brazil could be gen­uinely con­sid­ered extra vir­gin. And now, Brazil con­tin­ues to be embroiled in a cri­sis that’s tear­ing apart not only the niche gourmet extra vir­gin olive oil indus­try but also the nation as a whole.

So how can the elec­tion of Donald Trump reveal some of Brazil’s polit­i­cal woes at present? Foremost, Trump’s vic­tory per the elec­toral col­lege (no pop­u­lar vote needed) is rem­i­nis­cent of the ouster of Dilma Rousseff, the first female pres­i­dent of Brazil.

Despite Brazil’s pub­lic pros­e­cu­tor find­ing her inno­cent of any crime, Rousseff, who had been demo­c­ra­t­i­cally re-elected in 2014, was removed from office in August. This polit­i­cal drama was par­tially moti­vated by the infa­mous Car Wash inves­ti­ga­tions which have rocked almost every aspect of Brazilian pol­i­tics in the past few years. Insinuations swirled ram­pantly about Rousseff’s involve­ment in either one crime or another. However, in the end, only her most devoted polit­i­cal foes, many of whom remain in office, were ever for­mally impli­cated or charged with actual crimes by author­i­ties.

BBC Brasil recently pub­lished an arti­cle titled Corrida pres­i­den­cial 2018 pode ter Trump brasileiro (Brazil’s 2018 pres­i­den­tial race may see a Brazilian Trump). My response was that they already have a Trump pres­i­dent with this newly installed gov­ern­ment. The polit­i­cal and eco­nomic crises have only wors­ened since Rousseff’s removal. Replacing her was vice-pres­i­dent, Michel Temer. His robust aus­ter­ity pro­posal (MEC 241) aims to put a 20-year freeze on all pub­lic expen­di­tures as well as alter the pub­lic edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum (one of the changes includes a rule that no polit­i­cal debates would be allowed in sec­ondary school).

Protesting Temer’s pro­pos­als, sec­ondary school stu­dents have occu­pied hun­dreds, if not thou­sands, of schools nation­wide, labor unions and social orga­ni­za­tions have taken their demands to the streets, and, as I write, a national strike is being orga­nized for the 25^th of November.

As Marchetti alluded to dur­ing his inter­view, the one-year drop in locally pro­duced olive oil sales is directly related to the eco­nomic and polit­i­cal crises that have inten­si­fied over the past year. Data sup­port­ing that cor­re­la­tion are few and far between. Nonetheless, while unem­ploy­ment in Brazil is up to 11.6 per­cent, mak­ing it the sev­enth-largest unem­ployed mar­ket in a sur­vey of 51 coun­tries, food prices such as black beans, Carioca beans, rice, pota­toes, onions, gar­lic, and, of course, olive oil, have all risen. Since the start of 2016, Carioca beans, a sta­ple food source, one of the most con­sumed type of beans in Brazil, has risen 54 per­cent.

Inevitably, gourmet extra vir­gin olive oil pro­duc­ers like Marchetti find them­selves in a catch-22. Whereas their niche food indus­try is wel­comed and needed in Brazil, the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic whirl­wind sweep­ing the coun­try doesn’t seem like it will end any­time soon.

Despite all, they’re press­ing for­ward, just like the stone wheels used to press olives in the good old days. But now, much of their work involves edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the qual­ity and fresh­ness of locally pro­duced olive oil. Not only does it reduce our car­bon foot­print, it can also help to ignite a stag­nate econ­omy.

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• TecnoPlanta


• Alimenta??o Fora do Lar


• The Nation