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Great celebrations
Two big events celebrate coffee re-
searchintheCountryin2017:inMarch,
the 20 years of the Coffee Research
Consortium, and in August, the 18
years of Embrapa Coffee. “These two
marks register the protagonist status
of Brazil’s coffee farming business at
home and abroad”, stresses the gener-
al manager at Embrapa Coffee, Gabriel
Bartholo. The researcher strengthens
that that all researchworks, directly or
indirectly, consider essential aspects
in their development, like productivi-
ty, development, product quality and
competitiveness, environmental and
social sustainability, low cost, transfer-
ence and introduction of technologies.
“This set of factors highlights the
purpose of the Consortium and keep
Brazil as a country of reference in pro-
duction and coffee exports”, he justi-
fies. Furthermore, he has it that the
evolution of Brazil’s coffee business
should also be attributed to the up-
wards of 300 thousand Brazilian cof-
fee farmers and to all other entities
linked to the sector, which has adopt-
ed the technologies generated and
signaled the need for new research
works to meet the needs of the differ-
ent markets. The initiatives of the Cof-
fee Research Consortium, developed
by Embrapa, include the recently cre-
atedCoffeeObservatory, developedby
Embrapa Coffee, which brings positive
implications to the competitiveness of
the coffee agribusiness.
ed the number of institutions involved in
the recent transformation of Brazil’s cof-
fee farming business. “In Brazil, after the
advent of the consortium, there is no lon-
ger any doubt about the positive and ex-
pressive transformation of the sector”, he
ponders. Among the numbers that attest
to the evolution of the sector, he cites the
ones that are related to the productive
area: in 1997, it covered 2.4 million hect-
ares and the crop amounted to 18.9 mil-
lion 60-kg sacks, with a productivity of
eight sacks per hectare.
Approximately two decades later, the
area devoted to coffee receded to 1.95
million hectares, but the Country pro-
duced 51.37 million 60-kg sacks in 2016,
with productivity at 26.33 sacks per hect-
are. At global level, Brazil’s share in the
market of 99.7 million sacks amounted
to 19%, in 1997, according to the Interna-
tional Coffee Organization (ICO). In 2016,
the Country’s share soared to 34% of the
total global production of 151.6 million
sacks – in spite of the 20-percent reduc-
tion in the planted area. In the same pe-
riod, domestic consumption jumped from
11.5 million to 20.5 million 60-kg sacks.
“The contribution towards this evolu-
tion came from approximately one thou-
sand research projects developed in the
field of action of the Coffee Research Con-
sortium. They generated technologies, ba-
sic knowledge, products and processes that
directly or indirectly benefited Brazilian cof-
fee agribusiness”, he notes. In Bartholo’s
view, the evolution of Brazil’s coffee farming
business attests that the research works, in-
novationand technology transferencehada
say in themodernizationof our national cof-
fee farming business. “The secret of these
results lies in the partnership and in the ful-
fillment of the supply chain’s technological
needsandofallotherlinksofthecoffeeagri-
business”, he concludes.
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Brazil accounted for 34% of
the global coffee crop in 2016
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