Black farmers in Brazil are changing their views on coffee production

Raphael Brandao beams with pride as he describes the high-quality Brazilian coffee he produces with beans sourced exclusively from black farmers in a country where many still associate the product with slavery.

The 31-year-old buys his coffee beans exclusively from farms owned by Afro-descendants and says his goal is to “reverse the logic that black people” like him “are just workers.”

“In my own way I am trying to make historical reparations,” Brandao told AFP at his coffee roasting plant in Nova Iguacu, a poor suburb of Rio de Janeiro.

Four years ago he launched his brand Cafe di Preto.

In 2022 he sold 800 kilograms (about 1,700 pounds), the following year 1.4 tons. This year he hopes to increase that to more than €200,000, after a 20 percent increase in turnover in the first quarter alone.

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The logo for Cafe di Preto is a raised black fist holding a coffee branch, and the different flavor lines are each named after important black women in Brazilian history.

Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery in 1888, and racial inequality remains high in a country where more than half of people identify as “preto” (black) or mixed race.

‘Changing the world’

Through his efforts, Brandao told AFP he wants to remind the world that Brazil has become a leading coffee producer

on the backs of slaves from Africa, where coffee comes from.

He also tries to “break the stigma that black people don’t produce quality.”

“So my work sheds light on this as well,” he said. “Today I have six coffees produced by black people, all… of great quality.”

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Many of his customers, he added, are looking for quality, but also a product that “changes the world.”

Brandao is a leader in Brazil’s so-called Black Business wave, which promotes trade between people of African descent as a tool for social progress.

He initially had trouble finding black suppliers, as the vast majority of coffee plantations in Brazil are still owned by white families.

“My black suppliers are the first generation to produce on their own land, often only a few hectares,” he said.

And Brandao has had to defend his chosen crusade more than once.

“I’m sometimes asked, ‘What if it were the other way around, if white coffee roasters bought coffee from white farmers?’ But isn’t that what’s already happening?”

From farm to cup

About 500 kilometers (311 miles) from Nova Iguacu is the 19-hectare coffee plantation of Neide Peixoto, one of Brandao’s first suppliers.

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“I have been in contact with coffee since I was a child. My parents worked in agriculture and I often went with them,” Peixoto, 49, told AFP at her farm in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais, a mecca for coffee production .

Unlike her parents, she grows coffee on land belonging to her own family, bought by her husband and brothers, who are also former workers.

“It means a lot to me to be a black specialty coffee producer because… we, black people, have a very difficult and painful history,” Peixoto said.

Most of the farm’s production is intended for export, but the beans reserved for Cafe di Preto have a special meaning for Peixoto.

“It’s exciting to know that the coffee I produce, coffee produced by Black people, is also roasted by Black people,” she said.

“I’m very happy to know that we are making this connection, from production here on the farm to the cup.”

Source: AFP