Overview

Fazenda Santa Inês is located in the municipality of Carmo de Minas in southern Minas Gerais at the foot of the Mantiqueira mountains. The nearest town, Olímpio Noronha, is about 3 km away, and the city of Carmo de Minas is somewhat farther, at 25 km.

When the farm was acquired by the Sertão Group in 1979 it was already planted in coffee. Soon thereafter work began on planting more fields, building new concrete drying patios, and installing a washer, dryer, and processing machine. The farm also had Girolando dairy cattle.

The coffee fields, especially the new ones, are grown from seed and carefully selected seedlings, a process that has always involved the participation and guidance of agricultural experts from Procoffee and the Rio Verde Valle Regional Coffee Producers Cooperative (COCARIVE). Diverse varieties are cultivated depending on the condition of the land with a view to improving production quality.

The Sertão Group is highly committed to environmental conservation, witnessed by the fact that it has preserved a large area of native forest on the property and protects all the mountain springs and creeks as well as the vegetation along their banks.

Social responsibility is also taken seriously on the farm: 13 homes for workers and their families have been built on the property, complete with the necessary infrastructure, including water, electricity, and a sewerage system. The houses are occupied by 35 employees on payroll and their families, or a total of 80 people. The rest of the workers’ families live in Olímpio Noronha. In addition to their wages, all the families receive milk, coffee, medicines, and other assistance, and they have access to soccer fields, a sand court, and a quoits court for recreation and sports. Employees’ children who are studying can easily get to school: a bus passes by the entrance gate several times a day and takes them there.

Coffee Processing System

Because of the topography, harvesting at Fazenda Santa Inês has always been done by hand, the cherries being collected on a cloth. This precaution is taken so that the coffee will not be contaminated or lose its quality.

Once they are picked, the cherries are taken to Fazenda do Sertão, another partner in the Sertão Group, where they are washed, pulped, and spread out, always with a view to obtaining a high-quality product. The next step is for them to go through the dryer; after this first pass, they are placed in temporary storage silos (resting silos) and returned periodically to the dryer until they reach 10.5% moisture content. At that point they go to special silos where they are held for 30 days.

Finally, the coffee is processed and taken to the cooperative, where it is sorted.

Commitment to Quality

This year a coffee pulper is going to be installed on the property, more drying patios and both resting and permanent silos are going to be added.

Year after year the Sertão Group has worked to produce the best possible coffee, struggling to achieve excellence and ensure that its coffee with the distinguished taste reaches the cups of the general population. The Sertão Group farms have been winning national awards from the Brazil Specialty Coffee Association (BSCA) and Illy since 2002, demonstrating the benefit of a shared effort on behalf of the entire Carmo de Minas microregion.

In keeping with the Sertão Group’s philosophy to continuously strive to improve the quality of their coffee, personnel from Fazenda Santa Inês often visit national and international sites to exchange experiences with other growers in an ongoing effort to raise the bar for the coffees it produces.