Venezuela: its plan to be the second largest cheese producer in Latin America

“Venezuela has been in a cheese revolution since the beginning of this century, producing in 2020 three times the amount it produced in 2000,” announced Latinometrics, a newsletter dedicated to data journalism focused on Latin America, at the beginning of March.

The graphic that accompanied the text used figures from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and stated that Venezuela had become a major producer of cheese.

Shortly after, numerous media outlets in Venezuela and the region echoed this information.

And, certainly, the figures on the increase in cheese production in Venezuela are remarkable. According to the FAO, Venezuela went from producing 97,104 tons of cheese in the year 2000 to 287,648 tons in 2020.

Those numbers would make Venezuela the second largest cheese producer in Latin America, surpassing Mexico and only behind Argentina.

However, the reasons for this increase in Venezuela seem to have more to do with the survival efforts of dairy farmers in the country in the face of the multiple crises they have experienced than with any other factor.

What happened?

Roger Figueroa, executive president of the Venezuelan Chamber of Dairy Industries (Cavilac), acknowledges that there has been an increase in cheese production in Venezuela, but he is skeptical of the FAO figures.

He indicates that to reach these numbers it would be necessary to dedicate all the milk in the country to making cheese, and he points out that this is not the case, since pasteurized, condensed, long-life milk, yogurts, etc. are also produced in Venezuela.

“We do not have that amount of milk,” he points out when asked by BBC Mundo.

“We assume that the FAO takes the numbers given by the national Executive and unfortunately for years, many years now, the national Executive does not have reliable figures,” he adds.

An FAO spokesperson confirmed to BBC Mundo that the statistics they publish are provided by the member states.

Andres Kowalski, general director of the National Foundation for the Development of Biotechnology and head of the Dairy Observatory for Venezuela, also claims to have discrepancies with the figures published by the FAO.

“The real value that is transformed into cheese in Venezuela is around 215,000 tons. The FAO reports 285,000 tons, but indistinctly Venezuelan production is well above that of many countries and that has an explanation: it is not that we produce more milk than others, but 92% of the milk produced in Venezuela is turned into cheese. That’s the detail,” says the expert.

It indicates that one of the elements that influence the increase in the figures is that in the past in Venezuela only formal production was counted, that carried out by the dairy industry, because there was no way to measure the production that occurred directly on the farms. nor in the informal cheese factories (those that operate outside the control of the health authorities).

He assures that with the Dairy Observatory they created a database with more than 95,000 farms (out of 132,000 in the country), from which they took more than 200 pieces of information and with which they keep in contact. This allows them to have updated real production data.

“That is useful for the State as a reference, it is useful for the industry and it is useful for producers, because the rest of the figures are extrapolated from some market data that are usually very outdated,” says Kowalski.

The increase in cheese production in Venezuela is directly related to the reduction in the share of milk production destined for the food industry.

Currently, the dairy industry uses only 12% of the country’s milk production, but before 2007 that share was between 58% and 62%.

“There has been a loss in milk processing and that was due to the government’s systematic attack against the industry through price regulations. This started from 2007, when the industry, faced with regulations that did not represent the true structure of costs, he said he wasn’t going to process to lose money,” Kowalski says.

Then, the milk that was not acquired by the industry was diverted to the informal cheese producers.

Kowalski points out that this change is visible in the increase in cheese production that occurred after 2007.

According to FAO data, cheese production in Venezuela increased from 95,600 tons in 2006 to 155,000 tons in 2007.

Another specific event that contributed to reducing the share of the milk quota used by the Venezuelan dairy industry was the electrical crisis that that country began to experience in 2019.

“The collapse of the electrical system in March 2019 broke down all the production chains and the dairy sector did not escape. It is possibly the most important element, since the industry stopped processing 66% of its milk and that was clearly converted into cheese. From Of the 50 million liters of milk that the industry processed monthly, 28 million were destined for pasteurized milk. Today we do not reach two and a half million liters of pasteurized products,” says Kowalski.

He explains that until 2019, the industry still processed 26% of Venezuela’s milk, but that it had to stop producing many products because businesses did not want to buy pasteurized products for fear that they would be damaged by a power outage. “That milk was also absorbed by informal cheese making,” he notes.

According to FAO data, cheese production in Venezuela increased from 224,000 tons in 2019 to 287,000 tons in 2020.

Another factor that has favored this phenomenon is, according to Kowalski, that while many farmers have faced difficulties in the production of their crops, livestock -which in Venezuela is dedicated to both milk and meat- has continued to be a good business. .

He explains that many farmers who previously planted citrus, cane or corn have turned to cattle raising due to the difficulties they faced with these crops.

“In Venezuela, you never had a loss of ranchers, all the time there was an increase due to people from the rural sector who became ranchers because the agricultural part was no longer profitable. Which means that now there are more players,” says Kowalski. .

Currently, the industry absorbs 12% of the country’s milk production, of which 4% is allocated to the production of pasteurized cheeses.

The rest of the milk is turned into cheese directly on the farms that produce it (42%) and in informal cheese makers that buy the milk both directly from farmers (29%) and from formal collection centers (14%) that sell them. the milk that the industry does not acquire, according to data from the Dairy Observatory.

But, how is it possible that Venezuela allocates such a large portion of its milk to the manufacture of cheese?

The answer has to do with economic elements, but also with the history and culture of the country.

“The main reason why 92% of milk is turned into cheese is because only 4% of producers have cooling tanks for milk, which is a perishable product. Cheese making is a way to preserve it in the field without being damaged. If this cheese was not made on the farm and if there was not that system, more than half of the milk production in Venezuela would be damaged because it cannot reach the industry,” says Kowalski.

Another favorable factor is that the bulk of the cheese produced in Venezuela is fresh, made with raw, unpasteurized milk, to which Venezuelans are culturally accustomed.

“These excellent-tasting Venezuelan cheeses, which are high in salt, low in fat and high in water, some are soft, others harder, are certainly a desirable dish in Venezuela. However, the hygienic conditions under which these products are manufactured are not the most adequate,” warns Roger Figueroa, of Cavilac.

The fact that they are made with unpasteurized milk and that Venezuelans are so fond of their consumption means an advantage for the producers, who have a captive market that does not face competition from similar foreign cheeses that cannot be imported for sanitary reasons. .

This preparation with raw milk and salt also explains part of the secret of the taste of Venezuelan cheeses.

“What makes Venezuelan cheeses special is that they are made with raw milk because they have all the native characteristics of milk, such as protein, calcium and mineral salts,” explains Dietrich Truchsess, known on the networks as @doctorquesero, a Venezuelan engineer who specialized in the production of cheeses in New Zealand and who is dedicated to teaching how to produce artisan cheeses.

“A cheese made with raw milk is much richer, it develops flavors better because it has all the enzymes, they have all the complete cultures, all the bacterial flora.”

“When milk is pasteurized, the pathogenic bacteria die, but all the lactic bacteria also die. The latter are seeded again, but they are not seeded in the original amount, but between 2 and 3 bacteria are seeded at most. For that is that the cheeses sometimes all tend to taste the same, because they are the same crops that are there,” he adds.

Truchsess points out that in order for these Venezuelan fresh cheeses to be exported, they have to meet international standards.

“Fresh, raw milk cheeses are not allowed by the regulations because they have high levels of Escherichia coli, in addition to other pathogens. So they do not pass the required laboratory tests,” he says.

“If we want to be competitive internationally, we necessarily have to migrate to pasteurized milk,” he adds.

Kowalski, for his part, says that Venezuela already has a good market to which it exports its cheeses, albeit through informal channels: Colombia, a country that, he says, absorbs between 35% and 42% of Venezuelan milk converted into fresh cheeses.

The expert indicates that the weight of the Colombian market is evident in the fluctuations that the price of Venezuelan cheese has suffered every time the binational border is closed.

But, in the end, is Venezuela the second largest cheese producer in Latin America?

The answer seems to be positive, because even if the data from the Dairy Observatory is taken -which places the Venezuelan production of 2020 at 215,000 tons-, that figure easily exceeds the production of Mexico, which, according to the FAO, reached 177,644 tons.

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