A Canadian-Brazilian FairyTale - Rance Hesketh's Happy Pigs

Rance Hesketh (in blue T-shirt) and his pigs

The lucky porkers who live on the Alfheim ranch, located high in the Serra do Mar mountain range that separates São Paulo city from the coastal plain of São Paulo state, just might be the most blissed-out pigs in all of Brazil. The ranch, whose name means "elf home" in German, is situated deep in the dense mountain forests of the Mata Atlantica, Brazil's threatened coastal rain forest. It is at Alfheim that Rance Hesketh, 49, a transplanted Canadian, cultivates organic crops and raises a variety of animals in the best-possible and most organic way, and it is there where those fortunate porcines spend their days rooting around, rolling in the mud and grunting contentedly.

Hesketh moved to Brazil in 2008, although he was already familiar with the country from previous visits, upon arrival began to implement his dreams for the ranch. Among his plans and ambitions was a scheme to raise native breeds of pigs organically and humanely. He eventually decided to raise two breeds, the Sorocaba and the Monteiro. When the ranch was ready to receive its first animals, he traveled to Mato Grosso state in western Brazil to pick up his first breeding pairs. Today, Alfheim is home to about 150 pigs who share their territory with organically raised dairy cows and free-range chickens.

The pigs are only fed organic food, which is primarily cultivated on the ranch itself. Sugar cane and manioc are planted on the ranch, and provide the bulk of the pigs' nutrition. Corn which comes from neighboring Paraná state supplements their diet and contributes about 20% of the animals' caloric intake. When the pigs are ready to go to market they are also given whole milk from the ranch's cows to prepare them for slaughter.

Every week, the ranch sends two or three pigs, aged between 3 and 6 months, to the nearest licensed slaughterhouse, located in Ubatuba, 35 kilometers away. Hesketh would prefer to slaughter the pigs on site, but is forbidden to do so by agricultural regulations. He disagrees vigourously with this requirement and says, "What good does it do to submit the animals to the stress of transport? It destroys all we have done in raising them humanely. We need to come up with a less stressful way of slaughtering our stock."

The pigs from Alfheim go to market at a much smaller size than most pork - at about 70 kgs (150 lbs), yeilding about 20 to 30 kgs (45 to 70 lbs) of deboned pork - but Hesketh believes that at that size, the animal provides a better-tasting and more tender meat.

The idea of humanely raising meat animals who feed only on organic, vegetable food is a new one in Brazil, where such ideas are just beginning to take hold with producers and consumers. Whether there is a viable market for such meat in the long run is still unknown. But what can be stated with certainty is that the grunts of the Sorocaba and Monteiro pigs who call Alfheim home sound like the grunts of very, very happy piggies.

With material from an article by Olivia Fraga published in the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper. Translation of Mr. Hesketh's remarks by Flavors of Brazil.

Happy National Coffee Day, Brazil!

Flavors of Brazil almost missed Brazil's National Coffee Day, being celebrated today, May 24. And what a celebration it must be, as it appears that Brazilians are the world's champion coffee drinkers. We would have guessed that title would have gone to the USA, where coffee is served in bottomless cups in Interstate truck stops and where urbanites daren't walk the streets without a Venti in their hands. But no, according to Brazil's National Coffee Producers Association, Brazilians drink more coffe per person than citizens of any other country - the total is a whopping 82 liters (about 82 quarts) per person per year. (Note that other sources dispute these numbers, so they can't be taken as gospel.)

Considering the fact that Brazilians don't drink coffee in large cups, the number of cups of coffee served annually in Brazil must be astronomical. Brazilian coffee is served in a standard coffee cup at breakfast and in tiny, tiny plastic cups (for a drink called cafezinho) throughout the day.

There's a lot of talk in the media these days about Brazil's current rise to the top level of the world's energy producers. What a lot of people must not realize is that the energy they're talking about is caffeine!

Incidentally, Brazil isn't just the champion in coffee drinking. It's also the world's largest coffee-producing country - by a long shot. According to Bloomberg, for the 2010-2011 season, Brazil produced 54,500,000 million bags of coffee. At 60 kg/132 lb per bag, that's about 3.5 million tons. The second largest coffee-producing nation, Vietnam, produced only about a third as much.

So tip your coffee cup and raise a toast to coffee-loving Brazilians.

A Seal for Locavores

According to the Random House Dictionary (2012 edition) the word locavore was coined in 2005, on the model of carnivore, herbivore and omnivore. The dictionary defines locavore as:

(noun) a person who makes an effort to eat food that is grown, raised or produced locally, usually within 100 miles of home

As in many places around the globe, Brazilians consciousness as to the origins of the food they ingest has been raised in recent years, and Brazilians, just like Americans, Australians or Germans, are concerned about all the issues involved in the eating of food produced or processed far from home and transported for long distances en route to the consumer.

Fortunately for those Brazilians who care about such issues, those who might call themselves "locavoros", a large percentage of the food eaten in Brazil is produced in the same region as it is sold and eaten, and most food comes from family farms, or small producers, and not from multinational agri-business giants. In the state of Ceará, where Flavors of Brazil is based, the ministry of agricultural development estimates that 70% of the food consumed in the state is grown or produced there on family farms.


Recognizing that consumers want more information about the origin of their food, and wanting to support and encourage local production of food, the ministry recently launched a new program involving a seal of origin for local products called "Selo Agricultura 100% Familiar" or, in English "The 100% Family Agriculture Seal." The seal is awarded to farmers and small food producers who can show that their products are local, produced or raised on family farms, and can prove that the products are environmentally sustainable, meet certain sanitary standards, that animals are treated humanely and that no child labor was used. Once these conditions are met, a farmer or food producer can apply to the ministry for a seal that he or she is entitled to use on labels, in advertising, and in signs.


To date, the ministry has issued 30 seals, to enterprises as diverse as beekeeping and honey production, rice and guava farming, fishing cooperatives and yogurt and cheese producers. There are an additional 120 enterprises whose applications are currently being investigated, and 320 producers have begun the certification process.


The seal, whose design was chosen by the public from among a number of contest entries, has been registered and copyrighted, and should begin to be seen on products in the first quarter of 2012.


In recent posts of Flavors of Brazil, we've highlighted similar seals certifying sustainable crab fisheries and shrimp aquaculture in Ceará. Such certification seems to be a growing trend here, and one that Flavors of Brazil endorses and applauds.

Should We Call It a "Traffic Marmelade"?

This year has been an exceptional year for the orange harvest in São Paulo state in southeastern Brazil. Preliminary figures show that the expected harvest will come in at 27% above last year's total, and last year's harvest was about average. It's the largest harvest in 15 years.

Most of the oranges grown in the state are not destined to be eaten in Brazil. They're intended to be drunk, as orange juice, in countries all over the world, in the form of frozen concentrated orange juice and not-from-concentrate orange juice. Brazil is by far the dominant exporter of orange juice in the world and it's position as the number one exporter is unlikely to be challenged soon. In 2010 Brazil exported 1,240,000 metric tons of juice. The number two exporter, the United States, exported just over one-tenth as much juice, only 155,000 tons.

This year's bumper crop of oranges combined with the sheer size of the harvest has created an unusual traffic problem in São Paulo - traffic jams (or marmelades?) comprised of long lines of trucks loaded with oranges stuck on the road, waiting for space to unload at the juice production facilities. These facilities cannot keep up with the volume of oranges arriving at their doorsteip and so the trucks and truckers are obliged to line up for up to two days before unloading their oranges. Production facilities are working around the clock, seven days a week and still cannot keep up.

Trucks loaded with oranges awaiting their turn to unload

The delays en route to juice production facilities means that when the oranges finally arrive, they are dehydrated and yield less juice. The delays also increase the cost of freight at the same time that the huge harvest has driven the price of a bushel of oranges to half of what it was last year.

Truckers, farmers, producers, and the other motorists who happen, just by chance, to get stuck in one of these traffic marmelades are all complaining - maybe there is some truth to the phrase "too much of a good thing."

Mango Season Has Arrived - Yippee, Hooray!

Although we're aware that winter is on the doorstep in much of the Northern Hemisphere, if not already knocking at the door, down here in Brazil the dog days of summer are upon us. Even in Fortaleza, where there is little annual variation in temperature, there's been a noticeable increase in temperature recently. And in more southernly parts of Brazil, they've gone on to daylight savings time. Hotter days and nights, and longer days are signs of summer everywhere in the world, but in Brazil there's another way to tell it's summer - it's mango season.

And how can you tell it's mango season here in Fortaleza? Easy... just walk the residential streets of the city for a few blocks, and look up from time to time into the foliage of the large shade trees that line the streets. It's hard to miss the bright yellow/orange kidney-shaped fruits dangling in the foliage canopy. They're all mangos - and all ready for plucking - ready, that is, if you can figure out a way to get 30 or 40 feet up into the tree to snag a couple.

But's there's an easier way to enjoy mango season than monkeying your way up a gigantic mango tree - just head for the local produce store or supermarket and you'll see huge bins of mangoes - usually at least four or five different varieties. All ready to eat and all getting cheaper by the day.

Mangoes grow almost everywhere in Brazil and when they're in season they're ubiquitous. In the trees, in shops and stores and on street vendors carts. Or even at stop lights - most intersections have fruit vendors who will sell a basket of fruit to you through the car window while you wait for the light to change, and these days, the basket is likely to be mangoes.

Brazil's mango crop is colossal. According to government statistics, Brazil produces about 825,000 tons of mangoes each year. Even considering that  over 90% of the crop is consumed domestically in Brazil, the remaining 67,000 tons that are exported is enough to make Brazil the world's second-largest mango exporter, trailing only Mexico.

Just as strawberry addicts gorge themselves during strawberry season, or lovers of corn-on-the-cob make August meals that are just corn, corn and more corn, Brazilians love to indulge their taste for mangoes during the summer. Most of the mango crop is either eaten fresh or processed into juice, but there are many traditional Brazilian recipes that call for mangoes in one form or another. In the next couple of days, mangoes will be our focus here at Flavors of Brazil.

Brazil as a Rice-Producing Nation - Part 2

If Discovery Channel can have a Shark Week (about one out of every five weeks, it seems) then Flavors of Brazil can certainly have a Rice Week, which is what this week appears to be turning out to be here on the blog. Rice is such an essential and central part of Brazilian food culture that it deserves detailed coverage - and lots of recipes to showcase how many different ways rice is eaten in Brazil.

In the first part of this "rice saga", published yesterday, we detailed where Brazil fits in as part of worldwide rice cultivation and consumption patterns. There are places on Earth where the population consumes more rice than Brazilians do, and there are many more where the population consumes much less. On a per capita basis, Brazilians are right in the middle in terms of rice consumption. What makes the Brazilian rice market so large, however, is the sheer size of Brazil's population. Brazil is the fifth most-populous nation in the world, with the current estimated population of just over 194 million. It is outranked only by China, India, the United States and Indonesia in terms of population. So if you take the estimated per capita consumption of 45 kgs (100 lbs) and multiply that by 200 million you've got a lot of rice.

Irrigated rice field - Rio Grande do Sul

Where is most of this rice grown? Although rice requires warm weather and adequate water to grow, large portions of Brazil are not suitable for rice cultivation. Rice cannot be cultivated in the Amazonian rain forest which covers more than half of Brazilian territory. Because of agricultural suitability, historical patterns of habitation and present-day economics rice cultivation is concentrated today in two Brazilian regions. The most important region is Brazil's far south - the two southern-most states in the country, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, where about 54% of Brazil's rice comes from. The second region is in the state of Mato Grosso, in the the Center-West Region, where about 15% of the nation's rice is grown. The balance of the crop comes from a number of regions in the South-east and North-east of the country.

Non-irrigated rice field - Mato Grosso

The two main regions for cultivating rice use very different cultivating techniques to grow rice. In the South, rice is grown on older, well-established and irrigated lands. In the Center-West, by contrast, rice is grown on non-irrigated, newly-cleared land where rice is used to prepare the land for soy and cotton production. Rice production, therefore, is much more stable in the traditional rice-growing regions in the South, where rice has a long history of cultivation and farmers have a greater investment in growing rice specifically, because of the infrastructure required for irrigation.

Ecologists and environmentalists point out that the Southern rice crop is more sustainable than the crop from the Center-West. In the Center-West rice farmers need newly-cleared land for their crop, which means that deforestation is required. In the South, rice fields have long been established and there is no present-day deforestation occurring. Unfortunately, with the way rice is marketed in Brazil, it's virtually impossible to tell where the rice one buys in the supermarket comes from. Perhaps as consumers become more demanding in terms of food security and environmental impact some smart marketer might be able to sell sustainably grown rice, even at a premium. But the Brazilian market isn't yet at that point.

Of the total rice crop in Brazil 99% is long-grain rice and only 1% short-grain. Although whole-grain (brown) rice is available in most supermarkets, it's little seen in restaurants or in home cupboards and is consumed only by a very small percentage of the population. For nearly all Brazilians their daily rice is white and long-grain. Because the daily consumption of rice is such an integral part of Brazilian eating patterns, it will probably be some time before brown rice has wide acceptance.

Starting tomorrow,  Flavors of Brazil will continue its Rice Week with some typical Brazilian recipes for this grain.

Brazil as a Rice-Producing Nation - Part 1

Flavors of Brazil is full of recipes that include rice - not surprising at all, since most Brazilians eat the grain daily and have done so since Portuguese colonial times. Rice has a role in every regional cuisine in Brazil and is eaten across all the economic and social strata of Brazilian society - the maid in an industrial magnate's villa eats her own rice after serving it to her employer and his family, the middle-class working mother eats rice during her lunch break at work while her children eat it in a school lunch program and the urban poor who inhabit the slums of Brazil's big cities often eat it and nothing else besides beans for days at a time.

All added up, that's a lot of rice. Millions of tons of it every year. Recent statistics from UNCTAD (the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development ) tell an interesting story about the cultivation and consumption of rice in Brazil and around the world. Brazil is the ninth-largest rice producing nation in the world, and the largest producer outside the traditional West and East Asian "rice bowl", where 90% of the world's crop is planted. Brazil's total production in 2009-2010 was 10,198,900 metric tonnes which means it produced just under 2% of the world's rice crop. By way of comparison, China's crop, the world's largest, was 166,417,000 metric tonnes, accounting for 32.7% of the world's crop. Brazil is the only non-Asian country to feature in the top-ten list of rice producing countries. The amount of rice grown in the USA places it just outside the top-ten list.

These statistics show that Brazil is a significant producer of rice, but you have to look elsewhere, at statistics of per capita consumption, to get an idea of the importance of rice to the Brazilian diet. The data provided by UNCTAD divides the world into three rice consumption models, each with vastly differing numbers for per capita consumption. The first model is called  the Asian model, and in this group of countries typical annual consumption of rice, per capita, is over 80 kgs (or 175 lbs). In this group you find China with per capita consumption of 90 kgs (218 lbs), Indonesia with 150 kgs (330 lbs) and world-leader Myanmar with a staggering 200 kgs (440 lbs) annual per capita consumption. Brazil's per capita consumption is far lower, and the Brazilian model is called the Sub-tropical model by UNCTAD. Nations in this group are mostly Latin-American and African and annual consumption in the group is between 30 and 60 kilos. According to UNCTAD Brazilian consumption is 45 kgs (just about 100 lbs) annually per person, putting it in the mid-range of this group. Other examples of the Sub-tropical model are Colombia with annual consumption of 40 kgs (88 lbs) and the Ivory Coast with 60 kgs (132 lbs). The third UNCTAD model is called the Western model, and in this group annual per capita consumption is under 10 kgs (22 lbs) per year. In this group you find nations such as the USA, where people annually eat 9 kgs (20 lbs) and France, where only 4 kgs (9 lbs) of rice is consumed. The range between the models and between food cultures is colossal - residents of Myanmar, on average, eat 50 times as much rice as the French.

If you mathematically compare the size of the Brazil's annual rice crop with its annual consumption, it quickly becomes clear that Brazil doesn't produce enough rice to meet its domestic needs. About 10% of the rice consumed in Brazil every year is imported, mostly from other Latin American countries and from the USA. Today Uruguay and Argentina together supply about 85% of Brazil's imported rice. Brazil imports virtually no Asian rice, with the exception of specialty rices such as sushi rice from Japan. Although as recently as the 1980s Brazil as a rice-exporting nation, it is now firmly in the the rice-importing group of countries and accounts for 5% of total world imports.

In the next post onFlavors of Brazil, we'll look at Brazilian rice production - where it is produced, what types of cultivation models exist and what kind of rice in grown. Then we'll get back to the more culinary side of Brazilian rice, with a bunch of Brazilian recipes featuring the country's most important grain.

A Survey of Brazilians' Eating Habits - 2010

According to a recent article on the excellent BBC Portuguese-language news site, BBC Brasil, a survey of national eating habits in 6 countries revealed some interesting changes in the eating habits of Brazilians. The survey, conducted by The Oxford Research Agency, questioned 1543 persons in Brazil, China, the USA, the UK, France and Germany about how and what they ate.

The results would seem to show some of the effects of the recent Brazilian economic boom and the increasing size of the Brazilian middle class. Of the Brazilians surveyed 33% indicated they were spending more on food than they had six months ago. This percentage was second only to China's where 48% of respondents said their expenses for food had risen. By way of contrast, in the other four countries, the amount spent on food was reduced - by 48% of respondents in the USA, 45% in the UK, 28% in France and 21% in Germany.

More than 33% of the Brazilian interviewed said they had gained weight in the past year - the highest percentage among all respondents.

When questioned about eating fast-food, 25% of Brazilians replied that they ate it frequently. This percentage is similar to the fast-food habits of Americans, 28% of whom ate fast-food regularly. Surprisingly (to me at least) it was the French who were the most avid consumers of fast-food. 36% of them regularly eat Quarter-Pounders (or, for Pulp Fiction fans, Royal Cheese) or other fast food on a regular basis.

It is in the two countries surveyed which are members of the so-called BRIC group, Brazil and China, where the dining out habit is most firmly ingrained. 33% of Chinese and 19% of Brazilians said they dined at least two times a week in restaurants. The corresponding figures for Europeans are much lower - only 2% of Britons, 3% of Germans and 5% of the French said they ate out with such frequency. This is probably due at least in part to the fact that dining out tends to be very expensive in Europe due to high labor costs, and much more reasonable in the developing countries, where there is a large supply of inexpensive labor.

In general the survey would seem to indicate that as the population of the newly-developing countries like Brazil and China becomes wealthier and more economically secure their eating habits will change as well to more closely mirror the habits found in the developed world.

Eating Local Isn't Easy... Even in Brazil

In the most recent edition of Globo Rural, a combination of TV network, magazine and website from Brazil's media giant Globo, there was an interesting article which highlights the difficulty in sustaining a commercially viable locally-sourced food distribution system. As Brazilians become aware of the benefits of eating foods that are produced nearby, commercial pressures on the farmers and ranchers who provide local food often make it difficult for the consumer to find local foods. This situation is not unique to Brazil, but neither is Brazil immune from the problem. The following is a translation of the Globo Rural article, which concerns tomatoes from the central-west Brazilian state of Goiás.

In Goiás, the tomato harvest has already begun. This years crop was very good, but the large quantity of tomatoes entering the market has disrupted the normal pricing of the crop.

For twenty years farmer Deusdete Pereira has dedicated himself to the cultivation of tomatoes in the municipality of Goianópolis, in the center of the state. During the growing season, he was optimistic, betting that this year's profits would be large, as they were last year. But now that the harvest has begun, his situation has changed. "Last year, we did very well. Now, this year is beginning badly," he says.

The price of a 25 kg (55 lb) case of tomatoes has dropped by 71%. In August, 2009, the price of a caseof table tomatoes was R$35 (USD $19.80). Today, a case is worth R$10 (USD $5.65). According to the state agricultural department, Emater, the reason for this drop in price is the entry into the market of tomatoes from other regions, which are fighting for market share.

The majority of tomatoes grown in Goiás are sold outside the state. By the beginning of September local producers will have harvested two million tons of tomatoes.

On the property of farmer Marciclei Franco, with the product ready to go to market, he is also worried. "This year is difficult. It's either price-match or lose everything. The price is very low. There are too many tomatoes on the market, tomatoes from [competitors from other regions], he says.

Goiás is Brazil's largest producer of tomatoes, and provides 25% of the national crop.

When prices for a crop are so low that crop is not sustainable, as is the case with tomatoes this year in Goiás, farmers often stop producing for local markets, and consumers are forced to purchase alternatives from farther away. It's a difficult economic problem to solve, and one that will have to be addressed sooner or later, in Brazil and elsewhere, if the "eat local" revolution is going to succeed.