While the coffee world best knows Brazil for its enormous coffee estates — farms stretching as far as the eye can see — it’s also home to smallholder farmers who, given Brazil’s reputation, face an outsized challenge.
For this reason, we're proud supporters of the Força Café Championship — an event designed to recognize Brazil’s smallholders and to show off the quality of their coffees, thanks in part to their learnings alongside agronomists from the non-profit coffee foundation Hanns R. Neumann Stiftung (HRNS).
The event is hosted and organized by the non-profit Hanns R. Neumann Foundation do Brasil; Stockler, our sister export company in Brazil; and Fazenda da Lagoa, an NKG-owned plantation in Sul de Minas that acts as a model farm and is renowned for the exceptional-quality natural and semi-washed coffees it produces (you can find them on our Offering List).
It's an incredible opportunity to engage and encourage these producers, to savor their unique small-lot offerings and to experience Brazil’s supply chain — which, through our Neumann Kaffee Gruppe (NKG) sibling companies, is fully traceable.
And we invite you to join us there.
The 5th annual Força Café Championship will take place Oct. 21–27, and Head of Providence Trading Gerra Harrigan will be participating as a judge. We invite you to join her on the trip, which will include an opening reception at Fazenda da Lagoa, cuppings on the farm, a day and night in the colonial town of Tiradentes, and a return to Sul de Minas for the award ceremony and a cocktail reception.
The cost of the trip is $1,200 and includes board and lodging and all events during the week. A small number of people, on a first-come basis, will be able to stay in the house on Fazenda da Lagoa (pictured above).
It’s a tremendous opportunity to get to know Brazil, to experience a working coffee farm, to meet smallholder farmers and to learn more about the diversity of Brazil’s offerings. For more details, please email team.providence@nkg.coffee. •
Sunset on Fazenda da Lagoa.
