Barista Magazine

OCT-NOV 2013

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products at home and abroad. "We have to admit one thing," says Nasi Harb, executive director of FTB. "For every idea we need someone to nurture it and make it grow. Here in Brazil, we have SEBRAE." SEBRAE was also deeply involved in bringing the Expocafé to Belo Horizonte, and even more importantly, for promoting microlot coffees and helping develop relationships between farmers and their potential partners in foreign markets. It was behind the effort, for example, to invite in a number of green buyers from the U.S.A. and other countries to Belo Horizonte to try some of those coffees and meet the producers face to face. To that end, throughout the event, numerous rounds of coffee cuppings were set up, progressively highlighting better and better coffees, as each day was intended to showcase different, and unexpected, coffees. Bruno Souza, a former coffee grower who now owns the Academy of Coffee in Belo Horizonte was instrumental in selecting the coffees for the cupping, and says he has seen firsthand SEBRAE working to help growers develop a direct connection with their customers. "SEBRAE wants the opportunity for the producer to look the buyer in the eye and know what their coffees are worth," he says. The Brazil Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) is also heavily involved in the effort to create more long-term relationships between growers and buyers. The BSCA will be rolling out more programs and initiatives designed to promote the high quality, smaller lot coffees in the country in the near future. "If we can get a better price for the farmer, then it can make up for smaller production [that goes handin-hand with exceptional lots]," said BSCA President Henrique Sloper. Higher prices and solid relationships can create a mutually beneficial situation for buyers and growers, and also help remove some of the financial insecurity that plagues so many coffee farmers in their day-to-day and year-to-year operation. To create some of the relationships, following Expocafé the coffee buyers were invited by SEBRAE to visit a number of farms in different sections of the country. One group traveled north to Cerrado, and another one journeyed south toward São Paulo to Mantiqueira. One of the most well attended events at Expocafé was a lecture and discussion series called Café DNA. The sessions focused on the evolving landscape of coffee consumption around the globe, looking at emerging markets like China and India, and even Brazil itself— which saw at-home coffee consumption double between 2008 and 2012 (thanks in part to a governmental promotion)—as well as the huge growth of capsules worldwide, and also developments in more mature consuming markets like the United States. Ryan Knapp, co-owner of Madcap Coffee in Grand Rapids, Mich., was invited to speak about his company's experience in retail and the recent move across the specialty-coffee industry in the café scene toward pourovers and by-the-cup brewing. The Brazilian producers in attendance were interested in learning www.baristamagazine.com 31

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