The Almond Board of California (ABC) promotes hundreds of ways to enjoy almonds, but current Almond Leadership Program (ALP) participant Michelle Brasil isn’t fooled — she knows the best way to enjoy almonds is straight off the orchard floor.
The simplicity of Brasil’s favorite way to enjoy almonds is a striking contradiction to the complexity of her role at Olam International, a publicly traded agribusiness company. With approximately 48,000 acres of orchards in California and Australia, Olam is the largest global producer of almonds. The company recently expanded its nut division to include packaging and distribution of nut products under popular grocery chains’ private labels.
As a Key Account Specialist for private label businesses, Brasil and her team are responsible for facilitating market research, pitching product ideas and supplying nut products to national grocery store chains. Brasil's team at Olam works closely with their customers to source the nut products, process to desirable specifications, assist in packaging design, provide product samples and negotiate pricing.
There's also some significant logistics involved: the team receives and stores private label nut products from Olam’s processing facilities, including imports from their global marketing facilities and local shipments from Hughson Nut, Inc. Attention to these complex details may sound daunting, but it has a sweet reward: "The coolest part is going into a store and seeing the products our team has worked so hard to deliver," Brasil said. “It is both satisfying and rewarding to know I am just one small part of an industry that is responsible for feeding the entire world.”
Brasil’s job requires her to be focused, logistically savvy and task-oriented, yet her outgoing and warm personality reveals her biggest strength: connecting with people. That’s what led Brasil to apply to the ALP two years ago. The current ALP class is halfway through its second year in the program — since the first year was significantly interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Brasil shared her excitement at the prospect of attending in-person events once again. “One of the best things about the ALP are the connections you make along the way,” Brasil shared. “Continuing for another year gives our class double the time and experiences. Just like our industry, our class has adapted well to sudden change and we have made the most out of our opportunities.”
Although the year posed many challenges, Brasil successfully completed her ALP special project studying the efficacy of standard almond pasteurization processes to control the Indian Meal Moth (IMM) and Red Flour Beetle (RFB).
“Part of my role at Olam was handling claims from our customers. I wanted to find out why we were receiving live insect claims on loads that were already pasteurized,” Brasil explained. She worked closely with Dr. Sandipa Gautam, a research entomologist at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center, to design a study that would assess the effectiveness of each pasteurization process on IMM and RFB at each life cycle stage, from eggs to adults. From their research, Brasil was able to determine that the infestation was actually occurring after pasteurization, somewhere along the supply chain. “The problem is re-infestation during storage, shipping, or at retail location,” Brasil concluded. “Now we can focus on efforts on minimizing exposure at each of these points along the supply chain.”
Brasil’s special project addressed one issue in the almond industry supply chain, but certainly not the only issue. The industry faces numerous challenges, including water shortages and finding markets for an increasing supply of almonds. Brasil faces these obstacles with optimism and confidence that programs like the ALP are pushing the industry to find innovative ways to meet these challenges.
“I’ve always said, ‘you don’t know what you don’t know’ and unless you take the time to understand the way something works — or doesn’t work — you can’t be part of the solution,” Brasil said. “The ALP connects us to smart and creative individuals who have helped build the industry into what it is today. I believe my experience and knowledge can only add value to that.”
