From barely 500 animals to more than 2,500, the recovery of the Ramo Grande is being strengthened by genetic conservation, traditional farming and a new economic opportunity: Carne Ramo Grande DOP
There are breeds of livestock whose importance can be measured in production figures, market prices and agricultural yields. And there are others whose value extends considerably further, because their history has become intertwined with the history of the people who raised them. The Ramo Grande belongs unmistakably to the latter. For more than five centuries, this indigenous Azorean cattle breed has adapted to the islands, worked their fields and entered their traditions. After coming dangerously close to extinction during the twentieth century, it is slowly recovering. Today, however, its future may depend on something more than simply increasing the number of animals: giving the breed sufficient economic value to make preserving it worthwhile for a new generation of farmers.
Ana Luísa Pavão, Technical Secretary of the Ramo Grande Breed Herd Book, describes a population that has grown from approximately 500 animals to 2,558 over the past three decades. There are currently 263 registered breeders, and Ramo Grande cattle can once again be found throughout all nine Azorean islands. São Jorge has emerged as the principal center of the breed, with 1,042 animals and 112 breeders.
The recovery becomes more significant when considered against the breed’s history. Ramo Grande cattle trace their origins to animals introduced during the settlement of the Azores. Over more than five centuries of geographical isolation and adaptation to the particular environmental conditions of the archipelago, they developed distinctive characteristics. For generations, the cattle were valued for a remarkable triple purpose: milk, meat and work. The great pairs of Ramo Grande oxen became particularly associated with Azorean agriculture and transportation, admired for their size, strong bone structure, endurance and capacity for heavy labor.
Modernization nearly brought that history to an end. Beginning around the middle of the twentieth century, agricultural intensification transformed farming in the islands. The introduction and expansion of Holstein-Friesian cattle accompanied the increasing specialization of dairy production, machinery progressively replaced animal labor, and specialized beef breeds entered the agricultural economy. The Ramo Grande consequently lost many of the practical functions that had sustained it for centuries, and its population declined dramatically until the breed approached extinction.
Its survival was not accidental. During the 1990s, regional authorities undertook a demographic survey and genetic characterization of the remaining population. That work eventually resulted in official recognition of the Ramo Grande and the establishment of its Herd Book. Financial assistance for indigenous breeds through European agricultural policy subsequently contributed to its preservation. The result is the gradual recovery visible today.
But numbers alone do not guarantee survival.
With a relatively small genetic population, conservation requires careful management of reproduction. The Regional Directorate for Agriculture, Veterinary Affairs and Food currently manages a Conservation and Genetic Improvement Program that collects detailed information on the animals entered in the Herd Book. This includes morphological classification, monitoring the growth of calves through periodic weighing, temperament assessment and biological sampling for DNA parentage testing.
Genetic evaluation of both male and female breeding animals began in 2015 through scientific cooperation between the Regional Directorate for Agriculture and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine of the University of Lisbon. In 2019, the first genomic evaluation of the Ramo Grande was published, incorporating genetic markers alongside genealogical and production information. This allows breeders to identify desirable animals at younger ages and select more precisely for characteristics important both to preservation and agricultural productivity.
There is another challenge inherent in preserving a population of this size: consanguinity. Measures are therefore being taken to avoid mating closely related animals and to encourage the circulation of breeding animals between farms. In 2025, semen from carefully selected Ramo Grande bulls was also collected and cryopreserved, creating an additional safeguard for the breed’s genetic diversity over the long term.
Yet genetics can preserve a breed only if there continue to be people willing to raise it.
That is why the recognition of Carne Ramo Grande as a Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) in 2022 may prove particularly important. The designation provides an opportunity to transform genetic and cultural distinctiveness into economic value, connecting the survival of the breed with a differentiated product capable of establishing its own place in the market.
According to Pavão, the meat is distinguished by tenderness, considerable succulence and an intense characteristic flavor associated with the genetics of the breed, its forage-based diet and traditional production methods. In some cases, maturation is used to further develop its sensory characteristics. At present, castrated males traditionally used in festivities and adult females leaving reproductive activity are among the animals most sought after for meat production.
The DOP therefore represents considerably more than a label attached to a product. If successfully consolidated, it can help answer one of the most difficult questions confronting the conservation of any indigenous agricultural breed: how can preservation become economically sustainable?
A breed maintained exclusively because of nostalgia will always remain vulnerable. A breed that acquires recognized agricultural and gastronomic value gives farmers an additional reason to continue breeding it. The challenge is to ensure that commercial valorization does not replace conservation, but instead becomes one of the instruments that makes conservation possible.
The Ramo Grande possesses characteristics that may prove increasingly relevant to a changing understanding of agriculture. It is rustic and well adapted to Azorean environmental conditions, has good maternal qualities and a docile temperament, and averages approximately eight years of productive longevity. Its feeding is based predominantly on natural and improved pasture available throughout the year, supplemented when necessary with locally produced forage such as grass silage, hay, green corn and corn silage. It is therefore closely connected to a production system based substantially on resources available within the islands themselves.
Future genetic research is expected to investigate markers associated with precisely these qualities, including productive longevity, meat quality, maternal characteristics, rusticity and adaptation to the Azorean environment. The objective is not simply to preserve an animal genetically frozen in its past, but to identify characteristics that can increase both the value of the breed and the income of those who raise it.
And yet the Ramo Grande cannot be understood solely through the vocabulary of genetics, agricultural policy or economics.
Its enormous animals remain present in Holy Spirit festivities, ethnographic parades and demonstrations of traditional agricultural work. These appearances preserve something that cannot be contained in a Herd Book or DNA database: the memory of an agricultural civilization in which humans, animals and land existed in an intimate relationship of dependence.
The great oxen that once pulled carts and plows across Azorean fields no longer perform an indispensable economic function. Tractors replaced their strength decades ago. But their disappearance would nevertheless constitute a loss—not because the islands require them to return to an earlier form of agriculture, but because they embody part of the long human history of transforming these volcanic islands into places where communities could survive.
That history also explains why the future of the Ramo Grande cannot be understood through economics alone. Pavão emphasizes that breeders continue raising these animals because of family and emotional attachments, their relationship with the land and their commitment to rural traditions. The affection felt for these docile “giants” remains one of the forces keeping the breed alive.
This may ultimately be the greatest strength of the Ramo Grande.
Its recovery has brought it from the edge of disappearance to a population exceeding 2,500 animals. Science is protecting its genetic diversity. Public policy is supporting conservation. The DOP designation offers the possibility of greater economic return. And cultural traditions continue to give the breed a place in the collective imagination of the islands.
None of these elements, by itself, is enough.
Together, however, they suggest a model in which preservation does not mean placing the past behind glass. It means allowing something inherited from the past to acquire a viable place in the future.
The Ramo Grande crossed more than five centuries of Azorean history beside those who worked the land. Its next chapter will depend on whether genetic science, agricultural economics and cultural memory can now accomplish together what those great animals once did in the fields: carry forward a weight inherited from previous generations without allowing it to be lost along the way.
Based on a story in Diário Insular-José Louren;co-director-Photos from DI.