San Jose, Costa Rica, 11 July 2025 (IICA) – Maritza Solano Arce is a Costa Rican entrepreneur who has managed to combine her professional aspirations with a project that demonstrates that the hemisphere’s rural areas can produce high-quality gourmet products, thus benefitting local communities and paving the way for young producers. For these efforts, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) has recognized her as one of its Leaders of Rurality of the Americas.
Solano will therefore receive the “Soul of Rurality” award. The award is part of an initiative by the specialized agency for agricultural and rural development to turn the spotlight on men and women who are leaving a mark and making a difference in the rural areas of the Americas – a region that is critical to the planet’s food and nutritional security and its environmental sustainability.
Life events led Maritza Solano Arce, a Costa Rican, to live in Switzerland, where she discovered the path that she would need to take to realize her dream of becoming an entrepreneur. Maritza is the daughter of a dairy farmer and producer of Turrialba cheese, one of the most popular varieties in the country, which is produced in Cartago province.
The journey of young Maritza, like many others on countless farms across the hemisphere, took her far away from the countryside and the legacy of her parents to study marketing and business administration in the city. Then, in 2004, she had the opportunity to move to Switzerland with her husband, who had been employed by the United Nations.
“I went there simply as a spouse and mother of a four-year-old son and a three-month-old baby, never knowing that I would spend six years in Europe”, Solano Arce recalls. Yet, soon after arriving in Switzerland, it clicked to her that she could combine her business aspirations with the legacy of her dairy farmer father to produce high-quality cheeses.
Maritza stresses that her time in that European country “sparked her curiosity and a learning experience that continues to this day”.
Once she was clear about the path she should take, she began to balance her role as mother and wife with a plan to learn French and the secrets of cheese production in that region of Europe. “I asked questions and learned”, she recalls.
Taking advantage of livestock farming schools in Switzerland and France, Arce began to study how to distinguish between the more than 350 varieties of cheeses in those countries. The next step was to decide which ones she should produce on returning to her country.
“I took into account the Costa Rican palate and the first variety I learned to make was raclette”, a semi-cured cheese, used for melting, which originates from the Swiss canton of Valais. Every time Maritza identified a suitable cheese for her country, she would find the corresponding regions and their schools, asking questions in factories and cheese shops and establishing contacts with entrepreneurs and experts in the sector.
While she was still in Europe, Solano Arce’s father told her he planned to sell the farm, which is located in Santa Cruz de Turrialba. “I told him, ‘No, don’t sell it, I will take it over’”, says the entrepreneur. Maritza’s father died soon after, in 2010, and in 2011, having returned to Costa Rica, she took charge of the property. With the help of a master cheesemaker, who travelled from France to assist her, she launched her own company.
The birthplace of Le Chaudron and Del Guayabal, the two brand names of her company, could not have been more ideal. The land in the areas surrounding Turrialba Volcano is known for its mineral-rich soils and is especially good for cattle rearing, particularly dairy cattle. The Costa Rican producer tells us that Santa Cruz de Turrialba is “a small region that produces five percent of all the milk” in the country.
The company had modest beginnings. Maritza and Pierre, the expert from France, used about one hundred liters of milk to produce the cheeses. Now, she proudly updates us, reporting that, “Today, we have twenty people on staff, producing 15,000 liters of milk each week”.
“My father had stopped operating the farm”, Maritza explains, and thus we had to begin again. “I restarted everything. We remodeled a barn to begin producing cheese again and bought cows, making the property operational again. At that time, the cheese was manufactured using artisanal methods “in a tiny corner of the dairy, much like the majority of small farmers here in rural areas”.
Progress came after several years but it did become a reality. The process to gain microbiological safety certification was completed; the infrastructure was adapted; the business stopped rearing its own cows; and it established a network of suppliers in the region. It was a total transformation, notes Solano, enough to satisfy the auditing requirements and reach the shelves of the country’s major supermarket.
Later, Maritza’s business would resume the production of the classic Turrialba cheese, a type of cheese that was granted a denomination of origin, attesting to its traditional origins (the only cheese in Central America to achieve this, according to the University of Costa Rica). The business is now producing it, to great success, under the Del Guayabal brand. Nonetheless, the heart of the Costa Rican entrepreneur lies with another of her company’s brands, Le Chaudron (the French for ‘cauldron’), which produces the cheeses she fell in love with in Switzerland and France.
Solano Arce explains, “We began with raclette and today we have twenty-five different varieties, from all the families of European cheeses, except blue cheese, for now”. The Santa Cruz farm manufactures hard Gruyère cheeses (aged for six months and sometimes up to a year); bloomy rind cheeses, such as Camembert and Brie; tomme cheeses; creamy gourmet cheeses in five different flavors, “and we are going to start producing a very famous Swiss cheese called Tête de Moine, which in English is Monk’s Head cheese”.
Maritza produces twenty-five different varieties, including raclette, hard Gruyere cheeses, bloomy rind cheeses, such as Camembert and Brie, tomme cheeses and creamy gourmet cheeses in five different flavors.
Gourmet cheese and a better Turrialba
Solano Arce explains that a key element of her company’s philosophy is maintaining excellent relations with its milk suppliers, who must satisfy high quality standards. “One of the concepts that gave rise to our business is the idea that the company must impact the community and instill local pride in producing European-style cheeses”. Thus, she believes it is critical to engage with her suppliers—five producing cow’s milk and one goat’s milk—as commercial partners.
That connection to local producers is also part of the mindset that Maritza says she adopted during her years in Switzerland. In Europe, she says, “I had the opportunity to experience and learn” and to understand that in the old continent, cheeses are much more than a milk byproduct. “They are a legacy”, she insists, “part of the history of the people in the communities” where they are produced.
Her challenge in Costa Rica is to capture this strong tradition surrounding local cheese and to infuse it into gourmet cheese production. “This region tells the story of how Turrialba cheese was born” and now it can talk about “how we began to make European cheeses from the milk produced on the slopes of Turrialba Volcano, with the same milk that our farmers have meticulously and carefully produced” for decades, says the Costa Rican entrepreneur enthusiastically.
Maritza points out that “many in the district” have been involved in building this new legacy, which has proven that it is possible to make something other than Turrialba cheese in the region. However, the producer also points out that that variety, “the one that all Costa Ricans love, can also become a better Turrialba cheese, using improved techniques and quality standards”.
The entrepreneur points out that in the old continent, cheeses are much more than a milk byproduct. They are a legacy and part of the history of the people in the communities where they are made.
Businesses for young people and a store in Paris
Looking back, Solano recalls the difficult early days on the farm that once belonged to her father. In this sector of agriculture, “rising at dawn, collecting the milk, making the cheese, is a hard life, not to mention the machismo factor”. She had to learn to interact with the laborers and milkers. “It was very hard for me to earn their respect and taking control was not easy”.
“But nowadays, I give thanks for this process because it prepared me to sit with my suppliers and discuss cows, milk, grass, proteins or protocols with the utmost authority”, said Solano.
Despite her successes, the entrepreneur takes the opportunity to speak about the tremendous challenges faced by her company and the close to 500 dairy producers in the region, starting with the fact that many young people are distancing themselves from this industry and seeking their fortunes in the city or abroad.
Given that “the youth have no interest in continuing” their family business, we need to inject new life into the dairy sector to make it a business, to make milk production profitable”. One aspect that will be key to this transformation is to insist that greater value be placed on the raw materials and to reinforce the denomination of origin.
“Through these initiatives we are trying to give back to the community, to encourage children of today’s farmers to develop an interest in continuing the business”. She also feels it is important to “make consumers aware” that compared to importing, “we are proudly manufacturing cheeses with milk produced by our local small farmers”.
“It is painstaking, but it is important to work with this objective – to ensure that the dairy sector can sustain itself, can be interesting, can operate as a business, maintaining the farms and continuing milk production”, she stresses.
At the personal level, she adds that, “There is nothing wrong in feeling fear. There are moments when you ask yourself, ‘What have I gotten myself into? Will this work?’ I would wonder which cheese to start with and whether Costa Ricans would like it or not. If I were to pass on any advice it would be to remember that a business begins simply as a dream, and then it takes shape”.
We ask Maritza if her goals include the possibility of one day exporting gourmet Costa Rican cheese to Switzerland or France. Without hesitation she answers, “That would be our graduation, to have our cheeses sold in a store in Paris, alongside the best in the world”.
Solano feels it is essential to encourage young people to develop an interest in continuing the legacy of production and to make consumers aware that the cheeses are made with milk produced by small farmers.
More information:
Institutional Communication Division.
comunicacion.institucional@iica.int
