When Karina and Francisco Merlo decided to bet to dairy farming seven years ago, they thought it would be a reprieve from the challenges of growing crops that was the family’s mainstay back then. But the reality of running an artisanal cheese production farm like theirs in Rincón de Albano, San José, about an hour and half’s drive from Uruguay’s capital Montevideo, proved more labour- intensive than either of them had anticipated.
At first, the artisanal cheese production, which they took up from Francisco’s father, did not yield much at all. The schedules were also demanding: they had to get up early for the first milking and they sometimes made cheese till dawn to avoid losing the milk that could not be preserved until the next day. Karina would carry buckets of whey for the calves and lifted kilos of curd to make cheese, until she ultimately injured her back.
But they kept going. They learned by doing and talking to other farmers, and with the advice of technicians from the National Milk Institute (INALE) they gradually introduced new mechanisms and technologies.
"As you do trainings and visit other producers, you get excited, seeing how others progress," Francisco says.
Little by little, they acquired milking machines and new cheese making facilities, and in May 2017 they stopped producing crops on the four hectares of land they owned.
Today, Karina no longer has to transport buckets of whey for the calves, who are now fed through a pump system. Their new cold tank, meanwhile, allows them to store milk from one day to the next and make cheese only once a day.
Today, the easier life they envisioned is finally reality. The cheese they produce – which has a pleasant fruity touch – meets the legal quality standards for artisanal cheese, and the system they put in place makes it easy to monitor that quality.
Their 15-year-old son, Franco, meanwhile has developed an interest in agricultural machinery, and unlike many of his peers is studying towards a future in the countryside.
The success story of the Merlo family prompted their participation in an initiative promoted by FAO together with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) of the ORT University in Uruguay that evaluates and aims to improve the traceability of artisanal cheese using technology, in collaboration with the project of the Interinstitutional Agreement for the Development of Artisanal Cheesemaking (AIDQA) of INALE.
