FINDING TRUE COOPERATIVISM

“Look, down there, the wooden house. That used to be our house. The last few years we built this new, stone house. It happened since we got more money for our coffee. Since we understand how to improve quality.” says Donizete, a farmer in the region of São Jerônimo da Serra in Paraná, Brazil. His coffee plants look big, healthy. A few farms down the road we find Juarez, he explains that before he didn’t know anything about specialty coffee. “You know, coffee was just coffee. Now we have specialty coffee, and it is more every year. The plants are healthier, the yield is higher, the quality is better. As as a result, we live better.”

It is the core of the Four Seasons Program of agronomists of Capricornio Coffees, where they explain to smallholder farmers what to do every season, to gain the best coffee results. It’s an accelerator, an upward cycle of development, and giving farmers control and power of their own means. It’s such a powerful system, that in the region where Donizete and Juarez live, it unites farmers to work together, and create a local identity. It’s a sharp contrast with how the region used to unite itself before: via a cooperative that did not have much support, high overhead costs and little market access for good prices. The community connection died and the drive to produce a product you’re proud of with it. Selling directly, and connecting yourselves to local friends and friends far away, really proves to be the core of true cooperativism. It’s an upward cycle we’re very proud to support, being the first direct international buyer of this “new” community.

CULTIVARs

Mondo Novo, Obatã, Yellow Catuaí, IPR 107.

Elevation

800 to 1100 meters above sea level.

NOTABLE

Ten members of a badly managed cooperative decided to join forces and break free from the impossible protocols, bureaucracy, and fees a very large cooperative demanded from them. In 2021, after years of quality improvements and assistance provided by the Four Seasons Project of Capricornio, they exporter directly to the European market for the first time.

PROCESSING

The coffees are naturals, dried on farm. Depending on the rainfall during the season, mechanical dryers are used to ensure a steady drying process. Milling from parchment to green coffee happens in the region, and afterwards the green coffee “of all qualities” is transported to Capricornio Coffees. At their facilities in Ourinhos, a state of the art color sorter separates the qualities which are then continuously checked by a team of internationally trained Q-graders.

Cupping Notes

*Browse through our Tastify Archives on Google Drive.*

The price you pay for São Jerônimo da Serra coop lot - honey p/kg. We agreed on this price directly with the farmers, disregarding the volatile US Coffee C price.
Capricornio buys unsorted green beans (all grades) from farmers and pays them per 60 kg bag of coffee. Farmers can get a higher price for special processes. Capricornio pays a higher farm gate premium for nano, micro lots and other special processes.
Capricornio incurs cost to sort all grades of green coffee purchased from the farmer into different lots under the specialty grade spectrum like single farmer lots, blends, nano/micro lots and competition lots. Other costs borne by Capricornio include dry milling, grain pro, small holder training fee and exporter charges for sorting, shipping the coffees to the Netherlands.
International shipping from Santos, Brazil to Rotterdam, Netherlands. It is inclusive of customs, insurance and warehousing costs.
Average financing cost owed to (mostly social) lenders. This ensures immediate payment to the farmers when the coffee leaves the farm or port.
A standard TSU premium on all coffees designated exclusively to accelerate farmers’ own regenerative agriculture projects.
This Side Up compensation for spending time and resources importing this coffee. Our work includes year-round contact with producers, managing export, shipping, import, warehousing, grading, sampling, finding and keeping roasting partners for Capricornio. € 1,55 is This Side Up’s Model 1 markup. For a full overview of our modular margin construction, see the Trade Models page.

Key Achievements

2021: first connection between This Side Up and São Jerônimo.
2022: Maarten visits São Jerônimo farm members and discusses future steps, this is the first importer they know directly. They export through This Side Up for the first time.
2023: The This Side Up team visits, this time bringing European roasters with them. The direct relationships between farmer and roaster are established.