How a Desert Farm in Brazil Became Europe’s Melon King

In 1995, two friends went to collect a debt from a struggling melon farmer in Brazil’s parched northeastern sertão. The farmer couldn’t pay, so he offered 20 hectares of irrigated land instead. One of the men, a lawyer named Luiz Roberto Barcelos, looked at the dirt and saw a future. They took the deal. Thirty years later, Agrícola Famosa harvests one million melons a day and is the largest supplier of melons and watermelons to Europe. This is part of The Rio Times’ daily coverage of Brazil affairs and Latin American financial news.

The operation sprawls across 30,000 hectares on the border of Ceará and Rio Grande do Norte, two states where annual rainfall can be as low as 500mm. What makes it work is Israeli drip-irrigation technology, 28 wells drilled up to 800 meters deep, and 50 million meters of tubing threading through sandy soil that would otherwise grow little. The result: 300,000 tons of fresh melons and watermelons per year, processed through 16 packing houses and shipped from the Port of Natal at a rate of 10,000 tons per week.

Brazilian Melons Feed Europe First

Brazil’s melon exports hit a record in 2025: 283,000 tons worth $231 million (~R$1.4 billion), up 25% in revenue from the year before. The Netherlands absorbed 45% of shipments, followed by the UK at 25% and Spain at 21%. Rising domestic trucking costs, after new federal transport regulations, ironically pushed even more fruit toward export markets where margins were better.

The company’s ambitions go well beyond the sertão. In late 2024, Agrícola Famosa acquired Spain’s El Abuelo, a nearly century-old melon brand based in Murcia, creating the largest melon and watermelon supplier in Europe with combined revenues exceeding €230 million. The merger gave it farms in Brazil, Spain, and Senegal — meaning it can now deliver fruit to European retailers all 52 weeks of the year, filling the gaps when Brazil’s rainy season limits production.

The irony is that most Brazilians rarely enjoy their own melons. CEO Carlo Porro blames broken cold-chain logistics: fruit that reaches European shelves in pristine condition often arrives at Brazilian supermarkets degraded because refrigerated transport is scarce and expensive. A company born in one of Brazil’s poorest regions now feeds Europe better than it feeds its own country — a paradox that says as much about infrastructure as it does about ambition.

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