The Fontana family
Five generations on the land. Three migrations across Brazil. One family business, still family-owned, that in 135 years travelled from a smallholder plot in Rio Grande do Sul to an international grain-trading house with offices in Lisbon and London.
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1890
Italy → Rio Grande do Sul
The Fontana and Salvetti families cross the Atlantic as part of the great Italian migration to southern Brazil. Both settle in Rio Grande do Sul, the state Italian immigrants would help turn into a wine, wheat and dairy region. They arrive with the tools, the vine cuttings and the appetite for work that Italian smallholders carried everywhere they went.
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Mid-20th century
Rio Grande do Sul → Ubiratã, Paraná
The second generation reads the map. Paraná is opening up: cheaper land, a longer growing season, room for a family to expand a farm rather than divide one. The families move north to Ubiratã, in the west of Paraná, and put down roots on land that is still, today, some of the most productive soy country in Brazil.
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Late 20th century
Ubiratã → Luís Eduardo Magalhães, Bahia
The third generation crosses the country again — this time to the Cerrado frontier of western Bahia, where MATOPIBA is beginning to prove itself as the new productive edge of Brazilian agriculture. Luís Eduardo Magalhães, then still a young municipality, becomes home. The families plant soybean and corn on the red soil of the Cerrado plateau.
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2019
Ramon takes the reins
Ramon Fontana, fourth generation, takes over from his father Valtair and founds Fontana Agronegócios. The mandate: keep farming, but also formalise commercial services around the farm gate — origination, market intelligence, trade finance, inputs. Farmers in MATOPIBA needed a serious, transparent counterparty. That was the gap.
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2025
Siscomex authorised · Fontana enters international trade
The Receita Federal do Brasil authorises Fontana Agronegócios in the Siscomex system, formally clearing the group to export. The step from domestic origination to international trading is no longer theoretical.
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2026
Portugal HQ · London desk · Fifth generation on the land
Fontana Trading Europe, Sociedade Unipessoal Lda. is registered in Lisbon as the group parent. Fontana Trading UK Ltd. opens in London to handle English-law contracts, GAFTA arbitration and the Africa desk. Meanwhile the fifth generation of the family is already cultivating the Bahia farms. Three generations of migration; five generations on the land.
Every family business in Brazilian agriculture will tell you a version of this story. What is different about the Fontanas is that the migration didn't stop — it continued into international trade, and it stayed the same family the whole way.
Why this matters, commercially
A buyer in Rotterdam, Qingdao or Alexandria who signs with Fontana is not signing with a fund, a broker or a shell. They are signing with a family that has been growing soybean for four generations and now trades it in the fifth. The Portuguese parent gives EU-jurisdiction settlement. The UK subsidiary gives English-law contracts and GAFTA arbitration. The Brazilian subsidiary gives the actual grain — grown, in many cases, by the same family that sells it.
Family ownership means no external shareholders and no private equity backing. It means decisions can be made across timezones without a board deck, and that the person putting their name on the contract is the same person who cares whether the next generation inherits a good business.