This year, we rekindled our relationship with Daterra Coffee in Brazil (you may remember Kris even took their Low Caf Reserve at the SCA UK Barista Championship!) and we've truly been blown away by all that they do. Not only were all of the coffees we sampled stellar, but we learned about Daterra’s sustainability practices, innovations and the fact that they were B Corp certified and we just needed to know more! No surprises, we jumped at the opportunity when we were invited to head out and visit them with our friends from DRWakefield.
So here’s the story of when our B Corp roastery travelled halfway around the world to visit the first (and only!) B Corp certified coffee farm...
On day one of the visit, Gabriel Agrelli Moreira, Daterra’s Manager of Quality and Market Development, welcomed us and started painting the bigger picture of Daterra, telling us of their beginnings, purpose, goals, vision. From the get-go it was clear that they are passionate and proud, and that their impact is at the forefront of everything they do. In fact, the very beginnings of Daterra were more to do with benefiting the environment than they even were about coffee!
Gabriel told us that Daterra’s owner, Luis Pascoal, was initially looking to start a new business that vastly differed from the current family business - a chain of successful car garages. Whilst they did things as mindfully as they possible in the car business, it was never going to be great for the environment. Luis’ plan was to have his new venture be in agriculture, meaning that it had to work alongside nature, and the dream was a sustainability-focused project to help offset the impact of their other business.
Luis’ family had always been engaged with social projects in Brazil, even founding an education foundation that works with kids from underprivileged backgrounds. Having immigrated to Brazil from Italy, and having made their successful business and wealth there, the family were very grateful and wanted to use their privilege to give back to the people.
These social and environmental values were so deeply ingrained in the family, and so Daterra was going to be no different.
Luis began with a reforestation programme and started experimenting with farming various produce over the initial years to work out what the most viable business would be. They farmed everything from avocados to exotic Brazilian fruits to vegetables to cattle, before landing on dairy. Coffee was actually never on the cards for Luis. Being a commodity with fluctuating prices, he saw it as too risky an endeavour. However, on the farm which they obtained for dairy farming, there just so happened to be a coffee plantation and so the relationship began.
Over time, Luis studied hard to learn all there was to know about coffee, made some important connections with people such as Ernesto Illy and saw the coffee industry beginning to change into a specialty market. With all of this, Luis moved the business to prime coffee growing region, Cerrado, focused purely on coffee and environmental preservation, and Daterra as we know it today was born!
Now, at Daterra 50% of their massive 6400 hectares of land is dedicated to environmental preservation. In Brazil, there is a legal requirement for 20% of owned land to be preserved for native forest or vegetation; however Daterra believe in balance with the earth, giving as much as they take, and so they keep this at a 50% minimum.
During our visit, we were introduced to the native plant nursery in which native plants are grown and planted on Daterra's grounds. Here, Gabriel explained that simply planting trees isn’t always the answer; adding new plants and species that don’t naturally grow there can in fact negatively influence the ecosystem, and so Daterra works closely with scientists and agronomists to ensure the efforts they are making are truly making a positive impact. In fact, they’ve even found that sometimes the answer is to remove trees to let the land run wild and do its thing.
Daterra have even set up their own reforestation initiative - the Tree-llion Project - inspired by the fact that a trillion trees need to be planted in order to reduce climate impact. This pledge commits Daterra to planting 20 million trees in Brazil by the year 2030, stating that “we want to prove that an agribusiness can be a partner of nature and part of the solution to climate change. If we have the privilege of having land to produce, we must give it back to nature and help restore it” and this just rings so true to Daterra’s mission.
Planting trees isn’t the only way in which Daterra better their environmental impact. In fact, they incorporate sustainability into all of their processes and practices, seeking out every opportunity for waste reduction, repurposing, reusing and cleverly planning their “future farm” in order to prepare for and combat climate change impact.
Water is one big focus at Daterra. They’ve manufactured huge reservoirs, into which water is captured and stored from rivers that run through the farms. Irrigation systems have been implemented, which are supplied by these reservoirs - only used when absolutely necessary, in the event of elongated dry periods at times in the crop cycle where rain is essential!
Daterra also repurpose water used throughout coffee processing, adopting micro-biological cleaning to turn this from a waste product into a resource. The water can’t be fully cleaned to a drinking level, but the process produces three different levels of “cleaned” water. The cleanest is able to be reused in coffee processing - requiring the addition of 50% clean water but in turn reducing clean water use by 50%. The next, still quite nutrient rich, is used to water crops that aren't for commercial use. And the last is used to spray roads around the farm to reduce dust, improving safety for workers.
Many other byproducts or waste products of coffee farming are redirected from waste by being turned into organic compost, which is then used as fertiliser around the farm. Solar farms have been installed, projected to generate more than enough energy required to run the entire farm (and Daterra plan to donate the excess to local schools and institutions!). Reusable trays are used for seedlings, rather than the more common single use plastic bags. Filtered water points are located around the farms, reducing the need for single-use plastic water bottles. Famously, Daterra have also developed their own packaging, introducing their compostable pentabox and working to have their sacks use plant based alternatives to plastic and pure organic jute. The list really is endless in the innovative ways in which “waste” no longer becomes waste!
To further ensure the future of coffee farming, where temperatures are rising and impacts of climate change are apparent Daterra works with researchers and institutions, such as the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, to carry out genetic experiments. Over 500 hectares of their land is involved in research projects. These experiments develop new varieties, testing their behaviour with the aims of producing varieties of increased yield, drought tolerance and disease resistance. One famous example of experimental varieties being born in Daterra is the Laurina variety, which has since been used in global coffee competitions including the winning routine of the World Brewers Cup!
This research and experimentation is not only for their own benefit, but for the greater good. And in fact, Daterra even has an “Our Plot” program, allowing roasters to carry out their own experiments on a plot of land at Daterra. Finding new ways to grow and produce coffee is key in adapting to this changing climate and Daterra supports and assists with this, with the agreement that any findings and knowledge gained are shared with the wider community.
The World Coffee Research institute estimates that 50% of all coffee growing land will no longer be viable by the year 2050, so Daterra knows well that the very existence of coffee depends on fighting climate change. Due to all of their efforts, Daterra has already achieved being carbon negative, but that evidently isn’t slowing them down any time soon!
Becoming a B Corp coffee farm (or any type of B Corp for that matter) is no small feat, and Daterra worked tirelessly to achieve this status! Having already gained Rainforest Alliance, UTZ and IBD Organic certifications and even having created their own environmental preservation standards, becoming a B Corp was a logical next step for Daterra as it provided them a framework to keep continuously improving on the things they were already striving to do. Gabriel even explained that he didn’t want gaining their B Corp status to be like winning gold at the Olympics - putting in all of the work and effort, achieving the goal and then retiring - but rather the aim was to keep asking “what next?”.