We will be starting a new series here on our blog telling you all about the stories of our producers. We hope you enjoy!

“We have owned our property since 1977 when my grandfather acquired it, but he did not work specialty coffees, nor was it mentioned. In 2001, my father took over the land and its administration in order to add more value to the coffees we produced, we started to navigate the waters of specialty coffees, since our region started to emerge in contests and the market opened more with more attractive values.

In 2008 (at the end of my degree in business at UFV) I started to help him, planning our expenses and revenues in order to have historical data on our crops, management and productivity.

It was only in 2015 that my story started, I took over the management of our property after spending a good part of 2014 taking courses in the area of ​​coffee growing and improving myself in courses, fairs, business tables and so I got involved, meeting people, movements, associations, entities, a whole wide cyclical chain that involves coffee, targeting the specialty coffees, our current focus.

Our farm is located in the municipality of Araponga, in the region of Matas de Minas. A region perfectly prepared and adapted for the production of specialty coffees, climate, soil, relief, everything converges to excellence in the production of beans.

We cultivate 44ha of coffee at altitudes ranging from 1000 to 1250m of the Catuai and Bourbon varieties, with an average production of 1500 bags / year. We have a staff of 9 exclusive collaborators for the coffee activity, with a total focus on quality coffee, seeking to make a programmed management of our crops, drying and storing with controlled temperature, and evaluating the quality in the coffee tasting.

We have a mission that is: Produce with environmental and financial sustainability, using the improving business management techniques and good cultural practices, providing quality of life and satisfaction of the final consumer; and one objective: To be recognized as a model of agricultural enterprise, with innovations in the improvement of processes and environmental responsibility in all links of our productive chain that results in success.

With that well defined and understood, we were able to see our way and move on, with a final purpose, which would be the best coffee possible.

We have some characteristics and specificities that I observe comparing with other properties of the groups with which we are associated. We built within our property a maintenance structure for machinery and equipment (mini workshop) that addresses almost 90% of our problems with machine wear and parts replacement.

We have among the 9 collaborators, sons-in-law with father-in-law, children with parents, grandparents with grandchildren, all working in harmony in an extremely pleasant and familiar environment, which makes me leave the city (Viçosa) to go to the farm (Araponga ), 50km away, feel at home. We also have 128ha of native forest and 11 springs preserved within our property, justifying the name of the region. Our harvest is 100% manual, employing 10 to 30 people in the harvest period. We are members of 2 associations: ASCA (Araponga Specialty Coffee Association) and UpCafé Matas de Minas. We are aiming to show the quality of Araponga coffees by bringing together producers who focus on quality, and also in order to commercialize quality coffees in the region and negotiate inputs for group coffee activity, consolidating good partnerships.”