Brazil has been the world’s largest producer of coffee for more than 150 years. Currently, Brazil grows around one-third of the world’s coffee, although in the past its market share was as high as eighty per cent. Coffee was introduced to Brazil from French Guiana in 1727, while Brazil was still under Portuguese rule.
The first coffee in Brazil was planted by Francisco de Melo Palheta in the region of Para in the north of the country. According to myth, Palheta travelled to French Guiana on a diplomatic mission, seduced the wife of the governor there and was given the seeds hidden in a bouquet from her on his departure. The coffee he planted on his return home was probably used just for domestic consumption, and it remained a relatively unimportant crop until it began to work its way south, being passed from garden to garden as much as from farm to farm as a crop.
COMMERCIAL PRODUCTION BEGINS
The commercial production of coffee initially began around the Paraiba River, relatively close to Rio de Janeiro. This area suited coffee, not just because the land was ideal, but also because its proximity to Rio de Janeiro would facilitate export. In contrast to the smaller coffee farms that flourished in Central America, Brazil’s first commercial farms were large, slave-driven plantations. This industrialized approach is still relatively uncommon in the rest of the world, and fairly unique to Brazilian coffee production. The approach to production was aggressive: the most powerful, or forceful, would win disputes over poorly defined property boundaries and a single slave looked after four to seven thousand plants. When the soil became depleted from the intensive farming, the farm would just move on to fresh land.
Coffee production boomed between 1820 and 1830, overtaking the demand of Brazilian coffee drinkers and beginning to feed the wider global market. Those who controlled coffee production became both incredibly wealthy and very powerful and were referred to as ‘coffee barons’. Their needs would have a significant impact on the government’s policies and its support of the coffee industry.
By 1830 Brazil produced thirty per cent of the world’s coffee. This rose to forty per cent by 1840, although the massive increase in supply resulted in a drop in the global price for coffee. Up until the middle of the 19th century, Brazil’s coffee industry was reliant on slave labour. More than 1.5 million slaves had been brought to Brazil to work on the coffee plantations. When the British put a stop to Brazil’s slave trade with Africa in 1850, Brazil turned to migrant labour or its internal slave trade. There were great fears that the abolition of slavery in Brazil in 1888 would endanger the coffee industry, but the harvest continued successfully that year and onwards.
A SECOND BOOM
A second coffee boom ran from the 1880s through to the 1930s, a period named after the two most important products of the time. The huge influence of both coffee barons from Sao Paolo, and dairy producers in Minas Gerais, led to a political climate known as the café com leite period. This period also saw the Brazilian government start the practice of valorization, a protectionist practice designed to stabilize the price of coffee. The government would buy coffee from producers at an inflated price when the market was low and hold it until the market was high. This meant stable prices for coffee barons, and prevented oversupply from lower coffee prices.
By the 1920s Brazil was producing eighty per cent of the world’s coffee, and coffee financed a huge amount of infrastructure in the country. This unabated production lead to a massive surplus of coffee that would only exacerbate the damage of the crash during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Brazil’s government ended up burning around 78 million bags of stockpiled coffee in an effort to invigorate coffee prices, though it had little effect on them.
During World War II there was growing concern in the US that, with the European markets shut off, declining coffee prices could drive Central and South American countries towards Nazi or communist sympathy. In an attempt to stabilize the price of coffee, an international agreement was drawn up, based on a quota system. This agreement drove up the price of coffee until it stabilized in the mid 1950s and is considered a precursor to the much wider International Coffee Agreement (ICA) signed in 1962, which would come to encompass 42 producing countries. Quotas were fixed according to the indicator coffee price, determined by the International Coffee Organization (ICO). If prices dropped then quotas were reduced, and if prices climbed then quotas were increased.
This agreement lasted until 1989, when it broke down after Brazil refused to accept a reduction in its quota. Brazil believed that it was an extremely efficient producer, and could prosper outside of the agreement. The result of the breakdown of the ICA was an unregulated market, and prices dropped dramatically over the following five years, resulting in the coffee crisis that would inspire the Fair Trade movement within coffee production.
ON AND OFF YEARS
With Brazil being such a dominant supplier of the world’s coffee, anything that affected production in Brazil had a knock-on effect on global pricing. One such factor was the alternating cycle of Brazil’s annual crop. Over the years it became clear that Brazil’s harvest would swing each year between a large and a small harvest. Some work has been done in recent years to try to mitigate this effect, creating less variation year to year and greater stability. The reason for this variation in crop is that a coffee tree will naturally have an alternating cycle of large and small crops, but this can be controlled by light pruning. Light pruning has not been a common practice in Brazil, with producers preferring to prune back hard so there is little crop the following year.
In the past there have been dramatic incidents such as the black frost of 1975, which reduced the following year’s crop by nearly 75 per cent. As a result of the frost, the global price of coffee almost doubled immediately. In 2000 and 2001 there were two off years in a row, that resulted in a massive harvest in 2002, with a huge production of coffee. This coincided with another long period of low prices for coffee, caused by an excess of coffee on the global market.
MODERN COFFEE PRODUCTION
Brazil is undeniably the most advanced and industrialized coffee-producing country in the world. With a focus on yield and production, it has not retained a great reputation for producing coffees of the highest quality. Most large farms employ relatively crude picking techniques, such as strip picking, where the entire branch is stripped of its cherries in one go. If the plantations are large and flat (common in Brazil’s larger coffee farms), they use harvesting machines to shake the cherries loose from the branches. Neither method takes ripeness into consideration, and as a result there can be a large number of unripe cherries in the harvested coffee.
For a long time Brazil also processed a great deal of its coffee by sun-drying the whole cherries on patios (see The Natural Process). The introduction of the Pulped Natural Process in the early 1990s did help to improve quality, but for years Brazil’s speciality coffee producers – who may pick by hand, who may wash their coffee, and who may grow interesting varieties at higher altitudes – have battled against the country’s reputation for producing coffees with low acidity and increased body best suited to espresso blends.
However, while much of Brazil’s coffee grows below the altitudes best suited to quality, it is still possible to find some very interesting and delicious coffees there. Equally, the country produces some very clean and sweet coffees without much acidity that many people (quite rightly) find delicious and very approachable.
ROBUSTA PRODUCTION
While not a focus of this book, it should be noted that Brazil is one of the world’s primary producers of Robusta, along with Arabica. In Brazil Robusta is usually called conillon and is produced in regions such as Rondonia.
DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION
Brazil has been actively trying to increase its internal coffee consumption, with increasing success. While giving children coffee at school from a young age may raise some eyebrows, the consumption in Brazil now rivals that of the United States. No raw coffee can be imported into Brazil, which means that a large percentage of the coffee grown in Brazil is consumed there, though generally the quality of coffee for domestic consumption is lower than that for export.
Coffee bars have appeared throughout the major cities, though the price of coffee in these places is similar to better coffee bars in the United States and Europe so they have become another symbol of the increasing divide between rich and poor in Brazil.
TRACEABILITY
High-quality Brazilian coffees are usually traceable down to a specific farm (fazenda), whereas the lower-quality coffees are bulk lots and not traceable. Coffees marked as ‘Santos’ have simply shipped from the port of Santos and the name has nothing to do with where the coffee was grown. Brazil probably breaks the rule of thumb, that traceability is linked to quality, as there are farms in Brazil producing more coffee than the whole of Bolivia. And while the coffee may be traceable due to the size of production, it will not necessarily be higher in quality as a result.
A Brazilian worker opens the sluice of a washing tank, raking the clean beans on to a trailer.
TASTE PROFILE
Better Brazilian coffees tend to be low in acidity, heavy in body and sweet, often with chocolate and nutty flavours.
GROWING REGIONS
Population: 207,350,000
Number of 60kg (132lb) bags in 2016: 55,000,000
There are many different coffee varieties grown across Brazil and many of them were developed in the country or evolved there, including Mundo Novo, Yellow Bourbon, Caturra and Catuai.
BAHIA
This large state in the east of Brazil is one of the northernmost coffee-growing areas in the country. In recent years there have been more and more interesting coffees from this region and many people sat up and took notice when, in the 2009 Cup of Excellence competition, five out of the top ten lots came from Bahia.
CHAPADA DIAMANTINA
This beautiful area of Brazil, known for its national park, is named after its geology: Chapada describes the steep cliffs in the region and Diamantina the diamonds found there in the 19th century. A notable number of farms in the region are producing coffee biodynamically, an organic method of production originally developed by Rudolph Steiner.
| Altitude: | 1,000–1,200m (3,300–3,900ft) |
| Harvest: | June–September |
CERRADO DE BAHIA/WEST BAHIA
This region lends itself to large-scale, industrialized and irrigated coffee production. In the late 1970s and early 1980s this region was part of a government project to encourage agriculture, which provided cheap credit and incentives to around six hundred farmers who moved here. By 2006, around 1.5 million hectares (3.7 million acres) of land were being cultivated, although coffee made up a relatively small part of this. A stable, warm and sunny climate lends itself to higher yields, so it is a little harder to find something truly astonishing from this part of Brazil.
| Altitude: | 700–1,000m (2,300–3,300ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
A farmer in Brazil uses a sieve to separate coffee cherries from the chaff, which is carried away by the wind.
PLANALTO DE BAHIA
This coffee region has more of a focus on small-scale production, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures and higher altitudes to produce higher-quality coffees.
| Altitude: | 700–1,300m (2,300–4,300ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
MINAS GERAIS
In the southeast of the country, the state of Minas Gerais has some of the highest mountains in Brazil, providing good altitude for coffee.
CERRADO
Cerrado means tropical savannah but, although one could use this name to refer to the entire savannah that stretches through many states in Brazil, when it comes to coffee the name usually refers to the Cerrado region in the west of Minas Gerais. This area is relatively new to coffee production and perhaps this explains why it is dominated by large, mechanized farms. In fact, over ninety per cent of the farms in the region are larger than 10 hectares (24 acres).
| Altitude: | 850–1,250m (2,800–4,100ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
SUL DE MINAS
Historically this is home to a great deal of Brazil’s coffee production, and there have been many generations of smallholder farmers here. Perhaps for this reason there are many more cooperatives in the region. Despite the prevalence of small farms it is still a well-industrialized area, with a lot of mechanical harvesting.
Certain areas within the region have attracted more attention recently, including Carmo de Minas. This particular municipality, around the village of Carmo, has a notable number of producers leveraging the soil and climate to grow better coffees.
| Altitude: | 700–1,350m (2,300–4,400ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
CHAPADA DE MINAS
This region is further north, away from the other coffee-growing areas clustered together to the south. Coffee growing took hold here in the late 1970s. It is a relatively small area of production, with some producers taking advantage of the flat land to mechanize their farms.
| Altitude: | 800–1,100m (2,600–3,600ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
MATAS DE MINAS
This is a region where coffee took root early, and one that became rich on the back of coffee and dairy between 1850 and 1930. While the area has diversified in recent years, around eighty per cent of its agricultural income still comes from coffee.
The uneven land here, with steep hillsides, means that harvesting is commonly done by hand. Even though there are many smallholders in the region (almost fifty per cent of the farms are smaller than 10 hectares/24 acres) there is not the established reputation for quality one might expect. However, this is changing for the better and there are plenty of farms producing great coffee here.
| Altitude: | 550–1,200m (1,800–3,900ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
SAO PAOLO
The state of São Paolo contains one of the better-known coffee-growing areas of Brazil, Mogiana. The region was named after the Mogiana Railroad Company, which built the ‘coffee railroad’ in 1883, leading to better transport and a great expansion of coffee production here.
| Altitude: | 800–1,200m (2,600–3,900ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
MATO GROSSO AND MATO GROSSO DO SUL
This area produces only a small amount of Brazil’s annual harvest. Its large, flat highlands are better suited to the vast number of cattle raised here and the extensive soybean production.
| Altitude: | average of 600m (2000ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
ESPIRITO SANTO
While relatively small compared to other coffee-growing regions in Brazil, the second-largest chunk of the annual harvest is produced in Espirito Santo and the capital city, Vittoria, is a key port for export. However, nearly eighty per cent of the coffee it produces is conillon (Robusta). In the south of the region, the farmers tend towards Arabica production and there can be some more interesting coffees there.
| Altitude: | 900–1,200m (3,000–3,900ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |
PARANÁ
Some argue that this state is the most southern coffee-growing region in the world, and it is an important agricultural area for Brazil. Despite having just 2.5 per cent of the country’s land, it produces nearly 25 per cent of its agricultural output. Coffee was once the biggest crop here, but after the damage caused by frost in 1975, many producers diversified. While the region once produced 22 million bags of coffee, now it produces closer to 2 million. The first colonists here settled close to the coast, but coffee was the reason many moved inland. The lack of altitude prevents really high-quality coffees being grown here, but the cooler temperatures do help slow down the maturation of the fruit.
| Altitude: | up to 950m (3,100ft) |
| Harvest: | May–September |