Bota Fora

Fazenda Bota Fora has remained in the same family for over 100 years. Since Francisco Teóphilo Reis Neto bought the land and the fazenda in 1900, ownership has passed through four generations of family. The current owner and manager, Maria de Fátima Silva Marques da Fonseca, is the latest in the family to care for the land.

The farm can count on many years of expertise in quality production. Bota Fora has five permanent workers who have been working on the property for the last twenty years. For technical support, they can rely on the COCARIVE cooperative and Emater MG (a governmental organisation that provides assistance to farmers in Minas Gerais). These skilled teams of agronomists advise on the best planting techniques, cultivation systems, drying and conservation methods, the newest coffee processing machines and more.

There are a growing number of farms in Brazil that are focusing more on cup quality than volume. These farms approach growing, harvesting and processing with a great attention to detail. The altitude and volcanic soil in Brazil are prime conditions for growing the balanced, well-bodied coffees of Brazil.

Wide, flat farms make mechanisation easier and allow for reduced production costs, making Brazil one of the few countries with consistently comfortable margins in the face of low world prices. The relatively flat landscape across many of Brazil’s coffee regions combined with high minimum wages has led most farms to opt for mechanical harvesting over selective hand-picking. In the past, this meant strip-picking was the norm; however, today’s mechanical harvesters are increasingly sensitive, meaning that farms can harvest only fully ripe cherries at each pass, which is good news for specialty-oriented producers.

In many cases and on less level sections of farms, a mixed form of ‘manual mechanised’ harvesting may be used, where ripe coffee is picked using a derricadeira – a sort of mechanised rake that uses vibration to harvest ripe cherry. A tarp is spanned between coffee trees to capture the cherry as it falls. After picking, the cherry passes through colour-sorting machines to separate the ripe cherry from the unripes ones. The cherries are loaded into the pulper in lots according to quality. Once removed from their mucilage, the parchment and remaining mucilage is laid to dry on a cement drying patio. They are raked frequently to ensure even drying.

Finally, the dried parchment is moved to wooden bins in the storage room. Here, the beans undergo a necessary resting period to stabilize humidity. One month later, the coffee is sent to COCARIVE’s warehouses in Carmo de Minas