São Paulo – Fazenda Campo Verde, a farm in the city of Jarinu, in the state of São Paulo, works with ovine selection and breeding, and plans on entering the slaughtering industry and exporting. Halfway through this year, the company received an order for meat from the Saudi market, but did not supply it because it only sells breeding ewes and rams. According to the person in charge of sales, Lucas Heymeyer, the intention is to enter the ovine slaughter and sales industry in the future.
“First, however, our aim is to get our genetics project right,” says Heymeyer, who makes no predictions as to when the new operations will start. Fazenda Campo Verde has been in operation since 2006 and maintains 3,000 sheep of the Dorper and White Dorper breeds. The farm sells 300 reproductive sheep (female) and 3000 breeding sheep (male) each year. All of the animals are sold to the Brazilian market, mostly to farms that produce sheep for slaughter.
“Right now, we cannot even supply the domestic market,” says Heymeyer, who explains that demand outstrips production even though the farm does not carry out promotion work for sheep meat consumption. "Whatever we have, sells,” says Heymeyer. He claims that despite being low, the demand for sheep meat is growing in Brazil. Presently, the average annual per capita demand is 800 grams. However, in regions such as Juazeiro and vicinities, in the state of Bahia, the demand is 17 kilograms per capita.
One of the reasons for bullish sales of sheep bred in Brazil is the fact that Uruguay, a traditional supplier of the meat to the country, began exporting to the United States in June last year, when it broke into that market. Thus, more room was left for new sheep breeding projects in Brazilian territory.
Fazenda Campo Verde covers an area of 600 hectares, of which 100 are used for tending to the animals. The business arose out of research by the farm’s manager, Carlos Vilhena Vieira, and genetics were initially imported from South Africa and Namibia, where the Dorper and White Dorper originated. Ever since the farm started its breeding work, the animals and the premises have won several awards, among them seven prizes at the National Exhibition of the Dorper Breed in Uberaba, in the state of Minas Gerais, last year.
Contact
Fazenda Campo Verde
Telephone: (+55 11) 2626-9493
Site: www.dorpercampoverde.com.br
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
