Our daily cheese

These increasingly unusual daily routes allow the survival of a sector that ensures that we have exquisite, award-winning cheeses on the table inside and outside Canary Islands. Today I want to bring you an activity that should lead us to reflect on the importance of consuming local products, which are of great quality and help maintain not only our landscape but our own idiosyncrasy, also valued by the visitor who increasingly demands in the destination experiences linked to our tradition, culture, gastronomy…

The North has a great cheesemaking tradition, both artisanal and industrial. Yeray began this activity twelve years ago due to family tradition. After a few years in construction, he decided to dedicate himself completely to what he had until then been a hobby. Today he makes 40 kilos of cheese a day in his cheese factory in Pinolere. The cheeses in its varieties have obtained numerous awards, such as in 2022, which took the highest award for the best fresh cheese in Tenerife, gold medal for its fresh raw milk cheese and bronze medal for the semi-cured cheese with red prickly pear fig. Nowadays they make a wide variety of fresh and smoked ones, semi-cured with prickly pear fig, with paprika, semi-cured smoked with gofio, with oregano and with red wine. They also sell pistachio, paprika or coriander almogrote, yogurts and cottage cheese.

For Yeray, the situation in the sector is increasingly complicated due to the high price of maintaining a total of 150 goats, which must be fed daily to have a production of two liters of milk per day, which is the minimum amount that must be given to that is profitable. He once had up to 200 heads, but he has had to reduce this amount to be able to maintain the company. “In the last four or five years we worked to cover expenses and survive.” As an example, Yeray remembers how two years ago he bought a bag of millet for four euros and today he cannot get it for less than 10.50 euros. “This represents an increase of more than double that is very difficult to sustain.” To give us an idea of ​​what it means to maintain a farm, he tells us that he spends an average of 4,000 to 5,000 euros per month on feed.

According to data from the La Orotava Agrarian Extension Agency, this municipality has gone from counting 4,092 goats in 2014 to 3,605 last year 2023. Data that shows the abandonment that the sector is experiencing in the area. The demand for cheese persists because it is a quality product highly valued by the consumer, but if expenses exceed income, its permanence becomes less and less sustainable. “There are still people who make cheese without a quality seal, without insurance, without health registration and without any control system and that entails a risk that we have not assumed, which is why expenses also increase.” All these conditions put at risk the permanence of a sector that is part of our culture, our intangible heritage and that constitutes a tourist attraction.

The Antonio y Juana cheese factory is named after the couple that founded it thirty years ago. It is now managed by her children Abel and Melisa Farrais, who recognize the difficulties they have in maintaining it due to the costs involved in maintaining the 300 goats they have on their farm. They make fresh, fresh smoked and semi-cured smoked cheese with paprika, oregano and almogrote. They sell their cheese in small establishments and farmers’ markets in the north of the Island, never for large stores, and they have an average production of 40 to 50 kilos of cheese per day. Abel tells us about the worry they experienced in the fire last summer when they had to leave their farm and move all the livestock to a nearby farm. “Despite the help shown by the institutions that offered their facilities, we chose to take the goats closer to avoid further losses.”

Candelaria Rodríguez is the president of the El Campo-La Candelaria Cooperative, and head of the Cooperative that manages the Benijos Cheese Factory, with numerous awards also to her credit. They collect milk from about 26 small farms in La Orotava, Los Realejos and La Matanza that add up to about 150 head of cattle. Its cheese production focuses on fresh and cured goat, cow and blend cheese. She has also noted the drop in milk production in recent years as a result of the reduction in farms that have not been able to survive due to the high price of feed as a result of the war in Ukraine and other global conditions. What is clear, like Yeray, is that the consumer values ​​our local product and, despite the increase in prices, there is demand, which is why he is optimistic about the future of the sector, which involves not so much large farms but They require the occupation of a lot of territory and high cost, but rather for the maintenance of small family farms.

The flavor of the cheeses produced in the north of Tenerife is different from that of the rest of the Canary Islands as a result of a particular milk. that produces the native breed of this area. It is a medium-sized goat, with long black or brown hair and a backward spiral horn. It is a variety that adapts to more humid areas while those from the south are short-haired and more accustomed to arid and dry landscapes. As for milk production, although it is true that it is scarcer, its concentration in protein and fat is higher than that of other areas with a higher cheese yield and a unique flavor also marked by a diet based on grazing. This way of eating makes the goat choose what it wants to eat, also contributing to the maintenance of our biodiversity.

This traditional grazing practice is becoming less and less as a consequence of the development of population centers that have been limiting the space in which herds can move today. But fortunately, even in the La Orotava Valley we can witness that mix of tradition and modernity that means stopping our cars and, why not, our watches, to make way for those pieces of our history in the form of a herd of goats with their goatherd at the side. front and the guard dog ordering the platoon.

But not only construction has caused the limitation of land for grazing. Protected natural spaces and current restrictions make this traditional practice more difficult every day. After the fire, this old controversy has resurfaced, since there are many voices that consider that delimiting forest areas so that goats can graze could contribute to the prevention of fire and the maintenance of biodiversity. In this way, a balance could be achieved between the use of natural resources and the maintenance of a sector in decline. This is the same position as Abel, who recognizes that “if the goats were allowed to be taken to the mountains, we would save almost the entire cost of fodder, which is what is drowning us economically right now.” «The goats would clean the ground and help prevent fires», he details.

Goats arrived in the Canary Islands with the first settlers and are part of the idiosyncrasy and culture of this land. On the occasion of the festival of San Juan, in the month of June, the goatherds comply with the tradition of bathing their animals in the sea to purify them and promote their fertility, one of the few Guanche traditions that we have maintained and recovered thanks to the initiative of Chucho Dorta, a multifaceted man, firm defender of our traditions.

This activity takes place in a tourist municipality such as Puerto de la Cruz, thus demonstrating that tradition is compatible with tourism, enriching our destination with a very attractive complementary offer for a visitor looking for other experiences. Along these lines, complementary activities begin to be carried out, such as visits by tourists to the Benijos cooperative where they can see the entire process of making their products from the origin. They don’t just show the final product. In coordination with the goatherds in the area, they make known the particularities of our goat breed. «In this way we also obtain extra income for the rancher and we value their activity that goes beyond the cattle raising. Our goatherds are also artisans. They make collars to differentiate their goats and all of this has a cultural value that must be promoted for the tourist and why not, also among the people who live here, especially the schoolchildren, many of whom are unaware of our traditions,” highlights Candelaria.

This is also a good way to encourage kilometer 0 consumption and identify our products. More and more people are concerned about what they eat and identify food with health, therefore we must appreciate the benefits that fresh, local products that do not contain preservatives or colorings bring us. Therefore, it is important to visit the farmer’s markets, to help our farmers who are often suffocated by the conditions that large stores set for them in terms of prices. It is complicated and impossible to compete with the Peninsula or Europe, but we must make consumers aware of the importance of the money we spend on our products staying here and generating economy to also maintain our landscape.

On the left, the latest edition of the goat bath at the Puerto de la Cruz dock. Above, products from the Antonio y Juana cheese factory. On the right, at the top, cheeses from Benijos and, below, from the Pinolere cheese factory.