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Brazil waking up to the business of quality coffee
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BRAZILIAN farmer Marcos Croce has woken up and smelled the coffee — embracing the organic trend and bucking Brazil’s long-held status as a mass producer of poor quality beans.
His Hacienda Ambiental Fortaleza plantation in Sao Paulo state, goes against everything that has made Brazil the world’s biggest, though hardly most appreciated, source of coffee.
Croce’s specialty-grade coffee grows organically: some plants in the sun, others in the shade, and the soil is fertilizer free.
“We will never manage to compete in terms of quantity, but we have managed to stand apart with consistent quality,” the 62-year-old said.
The hacienda has been producing coffee since 1890, most of it for the mass market, and using fertilizers and pesticides.
However, when Croce and his wife took over the business in 2001 they switched to organic methods.
“Our production dropped 80 percent,” Croce said.
Before, the plantation collected 10,000 bags of coffee a year. Croce would not reveal the current output.
It’s still below old levels, he said, but the business is sustainable, selling to about 30 countries, including France and Italy.
“When it comes to coffee, Brazil has always been considered the best team of the second division,” Silvio Leite, president of the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association.
With production of 45.3 million 60-kilogram bags in 2014, Brazil accounts for almost a third of world output, trailed by Vietnam and Colombia. But there’s a problem: Brazilian coffee is very much at the bottom end of the market.
Rising demand
Last year, only 8 million bags qualified as specialty grade. However, that was up 59 percent from 2013, and specialty coffee is hot.
Demand for specialty coffee has risen worldwide by 10-15 percent in the past few years, compared with about 2 percent for regular coffee. The best known producers are Colombia and several African countries — not the sleeping giant of Brazil.
So what’s all the fuss about?
Specialty coffee means scoring 80 points on a 100-point scale, standing out for taste and having few or no defects.
A good cup of coffee is “a miracle ... there are many stages that need to be done right,” said Isabela Raposeiras, 41, who sells coffee at the Coffee Lab in Sao Paulo, ticking off everything from where the bean grows to how it is dried and toasted, to how the actual cup of coffee is prepared.
In Brazil, the number of regions producing specialty coffee is growing — and, whether it’s in Sao Paulo or Minas Gerais, Bahia, Espiritu Santo or Parana, each coffee is influenced by the different soils, climate and altitude. Gradually the trend is catching on. It was only last year that a regional designation certification was set up, with Cerrado Minheiro from Minas Gerais state so far the only one.
“There are incredible coffees in Brazil and they’re increasingly in demand,” said Susie Spindler, from the Alliance for Coffee Excellence.
On the patio of Fortaleza, farmer Ivan Santos showed off the dark, hand-picked beans from the recent harvest.
“Making quality coffee ... is difficult, slow and expensive, but it’s a dream: we are sending our best coffee around the world,” he said.
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