Flavia and Mario emphasize the benefits of responsible growing

Coffee cultivation in Brazil has a long tradition and plantations are usually passed down through the same family. Growers who have used the same methods for generations may be dubious about certification systems at first. Paulig’s Brazilian partners Flavia and Mario are convinced about the benefits of certification, and there is no going back to the old ways.

About half of the Brazilian coffee harvest comes from the state of Minas Gerais in the southern part of the country. The climate of this region is ideal for cultivating coffee and there is plenty of labour in the area, particularly necessary at harvest time. Paulig buys coffee from Minas Gerais, among others through the Exportadora Guaxupe company, which supplies 700,000 bags of coffee a year to buyers around the world.

Guaxupe also provides small and medium-size coffee plantations with intermediate storage, where coffee beans can be held until the grower wants to sell them. The warehouse sorts the beans and categorises them by quality before preparing them for export.

Guaxupe was the fourth coffee plantation in Brazil to receive UTZ CERTIFIED -certification, and its entire in-house output (some 80,000 bags a year) is UTZ-certified. The family company’s spokesman Flavia Barbosa Paulino da Costa says that, as a pioneer, they also wanted to help the other plantations in the region to go over to certified production. “We want to give an example through our own actions and we are also training coffee producers. Certification has a lot of advantages for growers as it boosts productivity and quality. Also, the demand for certified coffee is growing all the time.”

Certification system pinpoints details

Guaxupe regularly send Paulig a traceability report on the coffee it buys. Of the coffee exported by the company, 80% can be traced back to the plantation and the remaining 20% to the cooperative level. Monitoring reveals much more than just the location of the plantation – for instance, the amount of the harvest, the harvesting date, and action carried out on the plantations.

The changeover to certification-compliant production may seem laborious to the grower at first. Many familiar ways have to be changed, and sometimes purchases have to be made as well. “For most people, the first reason to go over to certification is the better price per kilo of coffee,” says coffee grower Mario de Freitas Eiras Garcia from the Fazenda da Onça plantation. “But even if the bonus for certified coffee were to go down later on, there will be no desire to return to the old ways once you’ve felt the advantages of certification for yourself. Production improves in efficiency and the risks get smaller, costs are easier to keep under control, and the environment benefits,” Mario enumerates.

According to Flavia and Mario, the strength of the certification system is in small details. With UTZ, growers are able to improve their operations in many respects that they might not even have noticed before. People’s wellbeing improves markedly when the risks of the job are better known. “Management and labour permanence have distinctly improved. Accidents happen less frequently and there have been improvements in protective gear. People and the environment are healthier now that less fertilisers and pesticides are used and wastes are sorted more thoroughly,” says coffee grower Mario.

"People and the environment are healthier now that less fertilisers are used."
Mario de Freitas Eiras Garcia
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