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Empreendedoras de Vila Pontoes) during but it is also the disadvantage for domes-
the visit. The core members of this group tic farm owners. Wandering around local
have been planting coffee since 1999, in Carrefour, we found that coffee in
doing mainly honey process. They started capsules, dark roasted coffee and 3 in 1
this group 1 year ago and improved the instant coffee are the top 3 most favor-
coffee quality, learnt how to cupp by able coffee types. Positioning as one of
themselves and invited Professor Lucas the 3 biggest coffee exporting countries,
to pass on knowledge on coffee process- Brazil and its citizens seem to lack
ing related technology. Finally, they were knowledge on specialty coffee. The cur-
in COE Top 10 for 3 times and even gained rent picture of exporting countries is that
2nd prize in 2002. As they say sharing is high-end coffee export goes overseas and
carrying, after achieving high scores this ordinary to low-end coffee is kept for
female organization gave the bonus, they themselves. They need more communica-
have earned, to hospitals and schools. tion and exchange with the rest of the
That is how they became famous, re- coffee world to get more change and
spected and admired by locals. challenge. For the coffee farmers who
are transforming low-end coffee to spe-
Pros and Cons of Protection Policy cialty coffee, one of the fastest way to
improve their coffee quality is to become
As the expert in coffee production, customers. Let them experience coffee
Brazilian government prefers to protect they plant and specialty coffee, let them
the producers by controlling import and compare the two and tell the difference.
export to keep domestic market stable. At the same time, driven by the higher
Meanwhile, the longtime single commod- benefit, and under the help of govern-
ity business limits the diversity of business ment and enterprises, they can speed up
in Brazil. It seems that the market is stable, in the transformation.

Diversified Business
in Farms

Among the 9 farms we visited,
besides selling coffee related
products, they feed cows and
pigs, produce milk, make dairy
and meat products. They keep
bees to sell honey. They produce
beer by following the same fer-
mentation as coffee’s… take Car-
nielli farm as a typical example: it
is good in diversifying its busi-
ness and branding its coffee.
You can even see their
products on counters of several
airports in Brazil. In their expo-
sition room inside the farm, we
can see bigger range of prod-
ucts, including family coffee
machines, small coffee making
equipment, cheese, pork and
other souvenirs.

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