“Obrigado” means “Thank you” in Portuguese and you hear this word, with the rolling “r” in the middle, everywhere in Brazil. If in a restaurant, something is brought to the table, the waiter says “Obrigado”, the guest answers “Obrigado” and when leaving the table, the waiter says– guess what – “Obrigado”. But thus are the Brazilians: friendly, fun-loving and altogether optimistic, despite of problematic economical situations. However, sometimes they are somewhat insecure concerning English communication, as this language is not wide-spread in Brazil. Pepper trade with Brazil is therefore not that easy, and the people, just below the 200‑million inhabitant’s mark, are dependent on help for being able to export the extensive natural resources of Brazil.

Nowadays, Brazilian pepper is highly demanded in Europe, as plant diseases and insect plagues in Vietnam lead to an increasing use of pesticides. For almost three years, AKO is buying pepper only from Brazil for protecting its customers against this kind of difficulty. As one of the few European Importers, AKO visits its suppliers in place.

Para in Amazonia

The crop is good in size; however, the heavier berries are so far less than last year. The pepper plants are full of panicles. But the heat is not good for the trees. The rainy season from January to June was scanty present and the daily cloudburst – predictable in a time between 3 p.m and 4.00 p.m. – had been missing in the second half of the year. At temperatures between 34 and 40° Celsius and a relative humidity of 80-95 % without rain, humans and nature suffer from the effects of El Nino.
At the time of our visit (end of September), the pepper crop in Para has already been harvested at 40 %; a few weeks too early because the pepper plants need to be released from the panicles before the fruits begin to emaciate the pepper plants and wither it.
On our field surveys on the pepper plantation, we recognized first heat damages of single plants. New plants suffer before ever having bore fruits for the first time.
The further processing occurs in Tomé Acu and Castanhal. Several processing clusters have formed here, whereas quality and size of the processing can substantially differ from each other.
In Para, 20 % of the crop is yielded by big farmers; the remaining quantities are from medium-sized and small plantations. We visited all three plantation sizes – whereas sizes in Brazil, a land as big as entire Europe, have another dimension than in Germany.

Our “big” pepper farmer is more or less a big family business of four brothers, all responsible in several topics. One of them works in the field of politics (!!), one at the National Board of Agriculture and the two other brothers took care on the farm. Altogether, they possess 10 lots of land (each with 25 hectares)