S. American Olive Oil Sector Celebrates Successes and Examines Challenges

MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – As olive trees blos­som across the hemi­sphere, 160 farm­ers, millers, researchers, stu­dents, gov­ern­ment offi­cials and mem­bers of the olive oil sec­tor from five coun­tries gath­ered in Montevideo, Uruguay, to dis­cuss the chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties fac­ing olive oil pro­duc­ers in South America.

The three-day event kicked off at the Uruguayan Technical Laboratory with an award cer­e­mony for the win­ners of the International Olive Council’s first Southern Hemisphere-spe­cific edi­tion of its Mario Solinas olive oil qual­ity awards.

The fol­low­ing day, IOC exec­u­tive direc­tor Jaime Lillo opened the sec­ond Latin American Olive Oil Conference at the new head­quar­ters of Antel, Uruguay’s state-run telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion com­pany.

“There is energy here,” he said. ​“Latin America is hav­ing an olive oil moment, and these con­fer­ences are impor­tant. There is a pas­sion and ded­i­ca­tion to qual­ity and a vision of the future.”

However, Lillo called on South American pro­duc­ers to con­front the chal­lenges posed by cli­mate change and said the largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region out­side of the Mediterranean basin must base long-term suc­cess on improv­ing qual­ity across the olive oil grades while effec­tively com­mu­ni­cat­ing olive oil’s sus­tain­abil­ity and health ben­e­fits.

The con­fer­ence empha­sized the role of sci­en­tific inves­ti­ga­tion in address­ing these issues. Special atten­tion was also paid to the role of oleo­tourism in mak­ing a noto­ri­ously low-mar­gin busi­ness more prof­itable for small farm­ers.

To that end, Uruguayan Tourism Minister Eduardo Sanguinetti and the dean of the chem­istry depart­ment of the University of the Uruguayan Republic fol­lowed Lillo with pre­pared state­ments about the sec­tor’s impor­tance.

Before yield­ing the floor to the first pre­sen­ter, Uruguayan Olive Association pres­i­dent Gonzalo Aguirre drove the point home. ​“Research and devel­op­ment is nec­es­sary for the sector’s suc­cess,” he said.

The first day of the con­fer­ence was dom­i­nated by dis­cus­sions about the spe­cific chal­lenges fac­ing South American olive farm­ers and the role of empha­siz­ing qual­ity to con­sumers.

Sebastián Sánchez, a chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor at the University of Jaén in Spain, started the con­fer­ence by dis­cussing the immense com­mer­cial poten­tial of olive oil pro­duc­tion byprod­ucts, espe­cially olive pits.

“The olive pit has a high energy con­tent, about 4,800 kilo­calo­ries per kilo­gram [gasoline’s energy con­tent is 10,915 kilo­calo­ries per kilo­gram], and a strong demand exists for use as bio­fuel,” he said.

“Equipment that sep­a­rates the olive pit from the rest of the olive is the piece of machin­ery in an olive mill that pays for itself the fastest,” Sánchez added.

He also pointed to the poten­tial for South America to invest in these facil­i­ties to cre­ate addi­tional rev­enue streams, and the poten­tial to cre­ate nutraceu­ti­cal extracts of oleu­ropein and hydrox­y­ty­rosol from olive leaves removed dur­ing prun­ing and sep­a­rated dur­ing the milling process.

A pair of Uruguayan researchers – Blanca Gómez and Ignacio Vieitez – reit­er­ated this point, indi­cat­ing that after about $2.2 (€2.07) mil­lion of invest­ment in the host coun­try, a viable indus­try pro­duc­ing ani­mal feed, cos­met­ics and even phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal prod­ucts could exist.

Other pre­sen­ters dis­cussed the need to pro­mote and com­mu­ni­cate qual­ity to con­sumers on the con­ti­nent, which has a pop­u­la­tion of nearly half a bil­lion.

Véronica Aranti, head of the Mendoza olive oil tast­ing panel and a researcher at the National University of Cuyo, dis­cussed get­ting the Arauco-based blend cer­ti­fied as a Mendoza Geographical Indication.

“[The Mendoza GI] rep­re­sents a before and after in Mendoza,” she said, point­ing out how decreas­ing olive cul­ti­va­tion in the region empha­sized the need to high­light qual­ity.

Anecdotal evi­dence from promi­nent pro­duc­ers in Mendoza has shown that the GI, which came into force in 2022, has pro­moted olive oil con­sump­tion among vis­i­tors to the wine-soaked region, espe­cially Brazilians.

Jorge Astudillo, a con­sul­tant from Atacama, Chile, also dis­cussed how the Valle del Huasco Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the first PDO in South America, was a first step to pro­mot­ing high-qual­ity extra vir­gin olive oil con­sump­tion in the coun­try.

“The com­bi­na­tion of cli­mate, soil and water of the area, together with a tra­di­tional cul­ti­va­tion sys­tem, gen­er­ates a dif­fer­ent and valu­able prod­uct, reflected in the high qual­ity of the prod­uct due to its polyphe­nol con­tent, oleic acids and organolep­tic char­ac­ter­is­tics,” he said.

However, he warned that pro­duc­ers would need to be patient since the cost of pro­duc­ing PDO-cer­ti­fied extra vir­gin olive oil is higher than other extra vir­gin olive oil, and the demand for PDO prod­ucts remains nascent across the con­ti­nent.

Other researchers focused on some of the chal­lenges fac­ing pro­duc­ers in South America, away from the oppor­tu­ni­ties pro­vided by pro­mot­ing qual­ity and the cir­cu­lar econ­omy.

Mercedes Arias, an agri­cul­tural engi­neer­ing researcher at the University of the Uruguayan Republic, dis­cussed the poten­tial impact of the lack of chill­ing units on olive farm­ers.

In a sep­a­rate panel, she also dis­cussed chal­lenges asso­ci­ated with pol­li­na­tion due to chang­ing tem­per­a­ture and pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns.

Researchers from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay later dis­cussed the impor­tance of iden­ti­fy­ing well-adapted cul­ti­vars to the unique cli­matic chal­lenges in South America and how they may fare as the cli­mate con­tin­ues to change,

“We need to pre­serve and learn about olive genetic bio­di­ver­sity,” said Rogeiro Oliveira from the Brazilian Agricultural Research Company.

Paula Conde, a researcher at the Uruguayan National Institute of Agricultural Research (Inia), later empha­sized the need for Uruguayan pro­duc­ers to focus on medium-den­sity groves instead of piv­ot­ing to high-den­sity.

“I’m con­vinced that switch­ing to super-high-den­sity is not a good idea for us,” she said. Despite the lower cost, she said Uruguay’s cli­mate is not well suited to trees planted so closely together due to the wet autumns and high lev­els of humid­ity year-round.

The sec­ond day of the con­fer­ence fea­tured dis­cus­sions of milling tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques, leg­is­la­tion and mar­ket trends around olive oil in South America, the use of extra vir­gin olive oil, its deriv­a­tives and oleogels in cook­ing, infu­sions and bak­ing, respec­tively, and the role of oleo­tourism for farm­ers and millers.

The morn­ing began with a dis­cus­sion about using enzymes in talc in dif­fi­cult pastes, help­ing millers max­i­mize oil yield from early-har­vest and high-humid­ity olives, while main­tain­ing qual­ity.

“The use of enzymes pro­duces olive oil with lower free acid­ity; we’re not just look­ing for yield,” said Miguel Amarillo, a food engi­neer at the University of the Uruguayan Republic.

María Lourdes Toujas, an award-win­ning miller with oper­a­tions in Uruguay and Argentina, added that some of the com­pa­nies with which she was involved have demon­strated that the use of enzymes also had no impact on the organolep­tic pro­files of the extra vir­gin olive oils pro­duced.

The tech­ni­cal dis­cus­sion gave way to a round table dis­cussing some of the reg­u­la­tions sur­round­ing olive oil, includ­ing areas for improve­ment.

“A gap­ing hole we have in Argentina is that the food laws do not con­tem­plate sen­so­r­ial analy­sis,” Toujas said, which means pro­duc­ers can get away with label­ing vir­gin olive oil that meets the physio-chem­i­cal require­ments but not the sen­sory ones as extra vir­gin. ​“We are work­ing to incor­po­rate this,” she added.

After dis­cussing health ben­e­fits, includ­ing recent research into the pro­tec­tive role of extra vir­gin olive oil on non-alco­holic fatty liver dis­ease, another round-table event dis­cussed the mar­ket real­i­ties in South America.

Ana Beloto, a Brazilian olive oil som­me­lier, said com­pa­nies export­ing to the world’s sec­ond-largest olive oil importer out­side of Europe must con­sider cul­tural norms.

She said Easter and Christmas are key dates in the Brazilian cal­en­dar with high poten­tial for olive oil sales, and pro­duc­ers must cap­i­tal­ize on this by incor­po­rat­ing olive oil into regional recipes and edu­cat­ing the health­care sec­tor and retail­ers about the prod­uct.

“We have to edu­cate every­one in the value chain, includ­ing retail­ers and dis­trib­u­tors,” she said.

Mónica Bauzá, an agri­cul­ture pro­fes­sor spe­cial­iz­ing in olive oil at Argentina’s National University of Cuyo, said the region must shift focus away from bulk exports to Europe to indi­vid­u­ally pack­aged pro­duc­tion. ​“We’ve changed [in Argentina] and are mov­ing toward qual­ity,” she said.

Lyris Marlene Monasterio Muñoz, a mem­ber of the Peruvian pro­ducer asso­ci­a­tion, Pro Olivo, added that her coun­try also seeks to stand out for qual­ity and is prepar­ing a fea­si­bil­ity study on apply­ing for a PDO cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for Tacna extra vir­gin olive oil.

A lunch break was fol­lowed by pre­sen­ta­tions on using extra vir­gin olive oil in the diverse regional cuisines of Latin America, the use of oleu­ropein extracts in infu­sions and new appli­ca­tions for using oleogels in bak­ing.

The con­fer­ence con­cluded with a round table of pre­sen­ters from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, who dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ties and chal­lenges sur­round­ing oleo­tourism.

María Isabel Hagg, from Argentina’s National University of the South, said that oleo­tourism is just begin­ning to take root in Argentina but could fol­low the well-estab­lished path of wine tourism.

She added that olive oil-spe­cific tourism routes are already being estab­lished in Mendoza, Córdoba, Catamarca and the province of Buenos Aires.

Meanwhile, Alejandra Cabrera, from Uruguay’s Tourism Ministry, argued that tourism could be used as a tool to develop olive oil pro­duc­tion by sup­port­ing and strength­en­ing the infra­struc­ture around farms and mills and even­tu­ally devel­op­ing olive oil routes sim­i­lar to those found in Argentina.

From the Chilean point of view, Astudillo, the con­sul­tant, returned to the stage and said that Chile has every­thing nec­es­sary for a robust oleo­tourism sec­tor, but more needed to be done to develop olive oil routes, sim­i­lar to what is hap­pen­ing in Argentina and Uruguay.

“Chile is far from hav­ing the oleo­tourism that Argentina and Uruguay have,” he said. ​“We don’t have bridges con­nect­ing the pro­duc­ers in each val­ley, but the poten­tial exists.”

The event closed with the announce­ment that the third Latin American Olive Oil Conference would be held in Porto Alegre, the cap­i­tal of Rio Grande do Sul, in 2026.