An Overview Of Our Solution
In the south of South America, where rolling hills define the border between the states of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, is a coffee farm called Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF) which has been owned and operated by the Barretto family since 1850. The family’s fourth generation, Silvia Barretto, the farm has taken a drastic shift in course since her tenure began in 2001. A longtime beekeeper, environmentalist and organic food supporter; Silvia has transitioned the farm into the 21st century by switching to organic methods, evolving traditional employee/employer relationships, creating social opportunities for children, women, and elderly. She has executed her mission to become a seed that spreads sustainability to the farm, families, businesses and communities. Today FAF has become world renown for its quality coffee and gold standard of sustainable practices.
Who is this solution impacting?
Community Type
Rural
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: South America
General Information
Organization type
Other
Ecosystem (select all that apply)
Forests
Population impacted
120 families
Challenge
Size of agricultural area
800 ha at FAF + 5000 ha/ partners
Production quantity
10,000 X 60 KG Bags
People employed
30 at FAF + 140 partners
Solution
Describe your solution
As our project expanded we decided to increase the area in which we worked to promote clean waters, air and trees for birds, and land for animals to traverse to other green areas. We started what is called today the “Bob-O-Link project”. The symbol of this project, the Bob-O-Link, is a bird that migrates from North America to South America every year and is disappearing due to intense agro-businesses both north and south of the equator. It is what connects us to our neighbours and allows us to think beyond our borders. The Bob-o-link project is a network of neighbouring farms located in the water basin of the Rio Prado river. Each are responsible for protecting the springs on their property to deliver clean water to the farmers below, thereby spreading the vision that we can produce quality coffee and participate in having clean water, clean farms, and quality coffee for today and tomorrow. For more information go to www.bobolinkcoffee.com
Here are some other projects that we have worked on:
Café Igaraí, creating income generation for women coffee pickets outside of harvest season.
www.cafeigarai.com
The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation with Sustainable Beauty Day, to plant fruit trees at schools in impoverished regions in São Paulo.
www.ftpf.org
Art Institute of Chicago offering youth an alternative to drugs and gangs through graffiti and hip-hop workshops.
http://arquivo.fafbrazil.com/fafbr/ip.asp?op=Films&lg=E
Implementation
Describe your implementation
This process began slowly through many learning experiences. In 2001 Silvia and Marcos were living in Chicago, Illinois. The transition to organic drastically reduced coffee production as the plants suffered from the abrupt termination of chemicals. It took years of planting a diverse mix of crops to slowly heal the depleted soil. After many years and many hurdles, they managed to get the attention of a small group of American specialty coffee professionals.
In 2007 Marcos exported his first container direct to the United States and put Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza on the map. In 2008 FAF won the Sustainability award from the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA), for their social and environmental work. As a result, many roasters began to follow FAF and came to visit to see what was being done at the property.
In 2009 Silvia and Marcos’ son, Felipe, who had been working at a specialty coffee micro-roaster in St. Louis called Kaldi’s joined the team and became the first family member to move to the farm full time. Felipe set up a coffee lab and began separating and studying lots by varietals and processing methods, thus creating the concept of Total Quality: the intersection between sensory quality and the holistic concept of financial, social and environmental sustainability. Around the same time neighboring coffee farms began expressing interest in the direct trade model and efforts towards improving quality and began partnering with FAF. There are now over 90 producing family farms, from 10 ha. to 200 ha. in size, dedicated to producing high quality coffee sustainably, in harmony with the land, animals and water, promoting biodiversity at a regional level.
External connections
Coffee and Agriculture related organizations:
We are currently partnered with over 90 small and medium sized producers all working on producing specialty coffee (80 points and up).
ACOB - Associação dos Cafeicultores Orgânicos do Brasil. http://www.cafeorganicobrasil.org/
Awareness, Education, training, workshops on Organic and Sustainable Agricultural practices for Quality Coffee production.
Partners of the Americas - Illinois chapter - São Paulo - cultural, scientific and social exchanges.
http://www.illinois-saopaulo-partners.org/agro-environmental/
NGOs:
Grupo Olho D'Agua - NGO that works with environmental protection of springs and forests in Mococa.
http://www.grupoecologicoolhodagua.org/
TUMM. Todos Unidos Mudaremos o Mundo - NGO that works with Children and Teenagers in Mococa
Links with Universities that visited FAF for workshops and credits:
University of Illinois - Champagne- Urbana
The School of the Art Institute - Chicago
University of Kentucky
Penn State University
Ohio University
Western Illinois University
ESALQ – Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz”
UNESP Botucatu
UNICAMP
Schumacher College
Government:
Actively working with the mayors in the Municipalities of Mococa, Tapiratiba,
Caconde, Divinolandia and São José do Rio Pardo, on the protection of the water Basin of the Rio Pardo river system.
Results
What is the environmental or ecological challenge you are targeting with your solution?
FAF is located in a geographical area that was once known as the Atlantic Rainforest. According to The Nature Conservancy, ‘85% of the Atlantic Rainforest has been cleared and what remains is highly fragmented’. Traditionally a coffee and milk-producing region, the area has been transitioning heavily towards vast monocultures and sugar cane production. Water sources are at risk of agro-toxic runoff and farm workers are facing agro-toxic induced diseases. At FAF, Silvia mapped out all 42 natural springs, fenced them off and reforested around them. She has implemented two forms of agriculture: fully shade grown agro-forestry coffee and organic multi-crop coffee with fruits, vegetables and green fertilization. Wildlife has greatly increased in these 17 years with even the recent reappearance of leopards. Her methods have increased soil fertility, soil humidity and provided reduction in temperatures for her cultivars as the region is suffering from effects of global warming.
Describe the context in which you are operating
FAF is a farm of 800 hectares, of which 1/3 is allocated as an Environmental Protected Area. It is located in the Mogiana region, in the southeast of Brazil at an altitude of 900 to 1100 meters above sea level. There are several surrounding villages, all with populations less than 10,000. The region, located in the coffee belt of Brazil, has had monoculture coffee plantations for generations that have had tremendous implications on the soil health. In recent years, many plantations have gone bankrupt due to the decrease in global coffee prices and increase in minimum wage. This has forced many farmers to mechanise where possible. These factors caused a chain reaction of consequences such as increased soil depletion, decrease in biodiversity, and job loss. These have had a myriad of subsequent social and societal implications such as dependency, depression, drug use, and emigration (to name a few). With the decrease in capital in the region, schools have worsened as well and most schools that served the rural areas have closed. With no hope, farmers have become unmotivated, desperate and cornered into selling their products to large companies for low prices.
How did you impact natural resource use and greenhouse gas emissions?
When we inherited the farm, the areas were split between monocultures of coffee, sugarcane, cattle, and a small area of preservation. Once we stopped spraying, birds and insects began to return. We planted more than 5,000 trees, focusing on the hard wood varieties, which had been removed due to past logging. We began to diversify our plantation to improve soil health by alternating coffee rows with banana trees for shade and legumes as nitrogen fixers. The bio-diversity in our fields invited more birds and insects and provided corridors for amphibians, reptiles, and mammals such as toads, snakes, monkeys, even jaguars and the Guará wolf.
Language(s)
Portuguese
Water
Each of FAF’s 42 springs have been protected by the replanting of trees and fencing from cattle. We have run water analysis with UniCamp and our water is safe for drinking, without a trace of toxins or fertilizers. Our partners of the Rio Pardo basin have understood that this must be a collective effort and have also begun to protect their waters for themselves and for the neighbors downstream.
Food Security/Nutrition
Our workshops teach the farmers to cup their own coffee to empower them to monitor their quality and know what’s working and what’s not. Before the BOL project the small farmers did not know how to cup and were solely dependent the buyer’s evaluation. Additionally, biodiversity means food all year round. With Schumacher College we studied the wide variety of non-conventional edible plants within our forests, and have learned that many species thrive naturally in our Atlantic Rainforest region.
Economic/Sustainable Development
By adopting TOTAL QUALITY, FAF and partners turned a historically low value commodity, into a high-valued item. With the third wave coffee movement, consumers around the world are beginning to prioritize quality over price, which has positively influenced many of the small and medium sized coffee producers. FAF and partners are now able to focus on quality coffee and sustainable farming methods and be fairly rewarded for it. We want to go to the next level by developing the Sustainability-Index.
Climate
With much of the Atlantic Rainforest clear-cut, the region has historically low rainfall. Moisture retention has diminished and irrigation has increased. In the Rio Pardo basin, more trees shade and protect the springs so the moisture levels in our soil stay high. Spreading the knowledge that trees and shade help to retain moisture and promote rainfall, that by protecting the springs in the hills, all the environment downhill will benefit, we can recover many other basins, one farmer at a time.
Sustainability
Our operation is self-sustaining through market-based revenue. Having changed our business and agricultural model, we significantly downsized our lots in order to focus on quality as opposed to quantity. By selling in the specialty market, we are able to sell our coffee at a higher premium and sell direct. The Bob-O-Link project has allowed us to reach the next level. By fostering relationships and knowhow among other small and medium sized coffee farms, we were able to incentives more people to focus on quality as opposed to quantity, allowing us as a collective to have a larger quantity of quality coffee. As a result, we are able to export to specialty coffee roasters around the world.
Return on investment
Today FAF is a living example that it is possible to be a quality and sustainable farm and also be a successful business. Capital investments have surpassed a couple million dollars as well as 17 years of hard work. The financial result has been greater than the investments and even greater has been the pride and change in attitude of all involved. Once a farmer becomes a quality oriented farmer this spreads to all aspects of life. Today FAF is an example of success as well as making farming to be perceived as an attractive profession.
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Replication and Scale
How could we successfully replicate this solution elsewhere?
The BOL project at its core is about spreading knowledge and implementing change. It is intrinsically replicable.
The BOL project is now known worldwide with coffee scoring 80 points and up on the Q-grade (SCAA standard). It is crucial that our clients understand what makes BOL coffees so special, beyond the flavor. For this reason, we only sell to clients who have come to visit the BOL farms and seen our work with the land, water, and biodiversity.
Our goal is to help the end consumer understand and reward the farmers’ efforts for all they do for biodiversity and environment. We have begun creating a set of criteria for the “S-Index” –Sustainability Index—so as to create a grading system for the responsible farmer. We believe the RARE grant would help us in this journey by bringing experts together, establishing the final criteria, the processes, and a platform to decrease the distance between farmers, roasters and consumers.