Brazil: How the US flooded its Christmas and year-round with pistachios

Pistachios are mentioned in the very first pages of the Old Testament as one of the "best products of the land" of Jacob, the biblical patriarch later designated as Israel. But anyone who looks at the increasingly green shop windows of sweet shops, ice cream parlors and bakeries in Brazilian cities in 2024 might even think that this is a novelty. Brazil, which does not produce a single seed, has never consumed so many pistachios. By November of this year, imports of the product were already 80% higher compared to 2023 — a year that, in turn, had already seen a 70% growth compared to 2022, according to the federal government's foreign trade statistics. Of the more than a thousand tons of pistachios imported in 2024, 85% came from a single country: the United States, which has broken production records year after year. Until 2021, the Americans competed kilo by kilo with Iran for the leadership in exports to Brazil. These record consumption in Brazil and production in the US are not ...