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No Dia Mundial do Café, produção sustentável ganha destaque por seu caráter transformador

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No Dia Mundial do Café, produção sustentável ganha destaque por seu caráter transformador

As a result of the Coffee in Agroforestry project, Apuí Agroforestry Coffee takes advantage of this date to share with partners its main achievements over the past 10 years

By Henrique Saunier

Translated by Felipe Sá

Photo: Disclosure/Derek Mangabeira

Driving the world’s second largest coffee consuming market, Brazilians have given more and more space to products that add flavor to social responsibility. Products such as the Café Apuí Agroflorestal (Apuí Agroforestry Coffee, in English), the first 100% organic coffee from the Amazon, emerge in the specialty coffee market both for its quality and for the reforestation work in the Amazon and support to 60 families being benefited in its production chain.

As a result of the Café em Agrofloresta (Coffee in Agroforestry, in English) project, coordinated by Idesam, Apuí Agroforestry Coffee takes advantage of World Coffee Day to share with its clients and partners its main achievements in the 10 years of hard work in the municipality of Apuí (in the state of Amazonas). Of the 100% conilon type, being dried in hanging yards, Apuí Coffee is produced in agroforestry systems by family farmers, in a model that regenerates and protects the Amazon forest. The product has already been responsible for planting 10,000 native seedlings, equivalent to 30 hectares of reforested area.

One of its main characteristics and reason of great pride of all those involved in the project is the whole commercial relationship established without the action of middlemen, guaranteeing fair trade in the production chain, from seed collectors to processing. This is only possible thanks to the work of operational structuring of the business and expansion of sales and opening of new markets for sustainable products.

In this work developed in partnership with Idesam, Apuí Agroforestry Coffee managed to increase the producer’s annual income by 300%, besides registering a 66% increase in productivity. “The project has an inspiring purpose, which is the transformation of deforested areas into productive areas. With this, in the next few years we intend to increase this work to 400 hectares reforested and up to 300 families directly impacted”, highlights the project’s environmental manager, Marina Reia.

In addition to providing technical support to producer families in Apuí, Reia was responsible for supporting the entire organic certification process for coffee growers in the region. She closely followed the work of producer Maria Bernadete, who together with her son takes care of the coffee on her property.

Ms. Bernadete recalls the first contact she had with Idesam’s representatives, when she put herself at the disposal of the project to work in her abandoned coffee areas. “When they asked me if I would be interested, I accepted and said that I would not dismiss this opportunity. After watching a video at an Idesam presentation, my son encouraged me a lot to do this agroforestry system. Now, we want to plant everything here, manioc, banana, cará, potato”, says the producer.

Apuí Agroforestry Coffee

On World Coffee Day, Brazil has an important role in promoting a production chain with good practices and fair trade as a principle. If the country continues at the recorded average annual consumption rate of almost five kilos of ground/toasted coffee, Apuí Agroforestry Coffee still has a successful path to follow.

With a focus on organic production, the number of bags and packages is expected to increase by 200% in the coming years as new producers enter the market. To learn more, visit the official product page.

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