Ethiopia's coffee harvest is wrapping up and coffee samples are becoming available and ready to ship in the Arcana coffee marketplace. Arcana coffee connects roasters directly with small holder farmers in Ethiopia and builds in the hard parts, integrated QC, logistics support and produce a lead transparency. With every passing day, new samples are being registered on Arcana's online marketplace with all the information you'll need to help you make buying decisions and build direct relationships with farmers across Ethiopia. Registering for an account now helps you understand timelines and can assist in planning your 2026 buying with confidence, even if you've never bought direct before.
The minimum is around 20 bags and Arcana can pull multiple roasters to meet that M.O.Q. so you can participate without overcommitting. If you're curious, listen to our recent conversation on the podcast with founder Matthew Thornton. Then explore the marketplace via the link in our show notes and register for an account.
You can also book a meeting with Matthew and he'll walk you through requesting samples, the order process, pulled orders, QC and shipping once coffees are ready. Samples are becoming available now and supporting our advertisers is a great way to support our mission at MAPA Forward to build responsible businesses with responsible pricing models. Check the show notes for details and explore Arcana coffee marketplace today. Welcome to the Daily Coffee Pro by MAPA Forward friends.
I'm your host Lee Safar and this is episode four of a wonderful five-part series with Jonas Lemie Feherisa. We are talking about the 2026 Brazilian coffee harvest. Jonas is a coffee agronomist in Brazil. He specializes in coffee.
This is what he has done all of his career. And in this particular episode, we are talking about sustainability, regenerative agriculture and agroforestry as movements in Brazil and why certifications are not the answer. Jonas, over the last couple of years, regenerative agriculture and agroforestry have been getting a lot of attention as sustainability seems to be a word that a lot of people are walking away from. And we're looking at things being more in balance.
We're looking at finding ways to make grown coffee more affordable for farmers, more profitable for farmers and really unhooking them from being dependable on agrochemical companies. This year, in fact, we have started to see a movement away from being sustainable and more focused on being prosperous. You know, sustainability is not the goal here. We want to have farms that are good business models.
They are focused on a very long future. And at the moment, we don't have that. At the moment, Arabica is under threat. Canifera uses a lot of water, so that could be under threat.
The climate is changing so much. So with all of this stuff, where are these movements? What role are they playing in the Brazilian coffee industry, I guess, agricultural industry? Yeah, the climate is something that it's more on the table than it used to be along the years.
Farmers know that climate is a shoe in growing, but they not face these issues to every year. You know, every year, we have some issues, some problems, and they have to struggle with that, even with the international prices going up most of the time, at least in the last two years. Let me say we have a good average price paid for farmers, but climate, it's being a shoe and it starts to be in the discussion of many traders and exporters and roasters that know there is no easy solution for that. So only I think if you are sorry, but there is no other word for that.
If you're stupid enough to think, climate will be not a issue for yields, even if you're an investor, you know, instability is not a good thing in investment. So climate is instability. Yeah, a thousand percent. So investors hate instability.
They want to predict the profit and everything. And I think it's why coffee growing is something that are so unstable in the sea market. And mostly it's because of climate, most of the issues we are having and facing in the first layer is climate. And because of climate, we have different layers of issues that came along with climate.
So that is why we saw this movement of sustainability facing in the first, how can you say that in the first as a first issue to give prosperity to the farmer before it was about, okay, do not use a lot of agrochemicals because it's not good. Do not use a lot of fertilizers because it's good. It's not good. It's because prosperity sustainability have now a layer of if we're going to have coffee tomorrow is not if we're going to have some more sustainable organic coffee in the future.
But it's about we're going to have some not only coffee, but any agricultural products in the future. What kind of strategies we need to use and sustainability strategies is one of the strategies that we should use for that because they show good results for the future of a Greek. So when we use a regenerative or a farmer use a regenerative technique now, it's about survive not to give some some picture for some kind of roasters that are roasted that want to buy sustainable coffee, but many times they need to do that in order to have coffee to use this to achieve, for instance, use more organic matter in the soil, keep the soil covariate along the year instead of using a lot of herb sites diversify types of best sites which could be biological, natural strikes or even traditional best sites, they need to use different types in order to not bring insects resistance or fungi resistance or bacteria resistance. So when we diversify, we have more chance to deal with these problems and why we need to diversify because of climate.
For instance, if we have a dry and hot season, there are more insects in the fields than the usual to be. So we have to use different types of best sites, sometimes not only the biological could be the solution. We don't know farmers need to prosper, like I said, and sometimes they need to use different types. We have to understand as a customer not the most of the farmers do not like to deal with agrochemicals.
As everyone with some sanity, no, it's not good to deal with agrochemicals in our area, but sometimes there's no way to escape. It's the most available, sometimes it's the cheapest one, sometimes the most efficient one to use it, but I saw traditional farmers start to use the biological too, because they sought some advantage in usage of these biologicals, because the prices are more affordable, because we have more companies producing industrializing these biological products, which could be industrialized in the country. In any country, you just need the bacteria or the fungi or the natural structure in your country. When we have biophabicase, to grow this bacteria and fungi or every kind of microganese that you want to use, you could grow it and sell it domestically, using not a lot of importation as traditional molecules that are produced, industrialize it in countries like China, Germany, Canada, or any part of Europe.
They sent these very concentrated molecules to countries worldwide, and then they are processed in Brazil, or Colombia, or Indonesia, no matter, to make it a commercial product. But usually the very concentrated molecules are made in these other countries to be processed here, so it's more dependable of international stuff like a war, for instance, in order to have this molecule here. And biological, we don't need that. We could do it nationally, and they are very efficient if they use it in the proper way.
Farmers are learning to use that, because it's different when we deal with something alive and a product. So there are some conditions of storage, application in order to keep these microorganisms alive to do their drugs. So farmers are like, okay, this is good, this could give me prosperity, whatever I want to do. And the same happens with agroforest systems, which is not very popular in Brazil for decades ago, and now I saw more and more people interested in that.
I like to give an example, for instance, I have now worked in a project for an international company that will help farmers to start agroforest growing in Brazil for 500 actors of growing, which for Brazil is huge for this type of technology, which is not popular. It's still a step to convince co-farmers, because there's a lot of, how can I say that? Like a pharma thing? Innovation.
This is good for me. Yeah, exactly. About that. So farmers now have some results to see that we do not have 10 years ago, that more innovative farmers and entrepreneurs start to grow for 10 years ago, and they have good results to solve overheating for the future.
We're heating for the field protection against frost and cold mass air, more resilience to plagues and seas, because we have more natural predators when we have forests in the coffee field. We protect the soil against erosion, and the storage of the water in the soil is big. If vapor, transfer of operation, I think it's cold. Yeah, it's cold.
So we have to deal with that, because not everything is good, because arabica growing, the genetics of arabica, even in the traditional Ethiopia growing, we use shaded coffee. The varieties that we use in Brazil was adapted to full sun exposition for 100 years. Our genetic program in Brazilian breeding program was very sophisticated for coffee, because our soil has a low content of organic material, which is not to usual. In Colombia, Ethiopia, in many countries that they grow coffee under shaded trees.
So our coffee needs to be adapted to low content of water, low content of organic matter, low rainfall, usually in areas like Colombia and Ethiopia. They have more than 1,500 millimeters of rain along the year for arabica, and in Brazil we have close to 1,500 millimeters of water, so our varieties are adapted to dry soil. We have low content of phosphorus in the soil, because it's a characteristic of soil in Brazil, and we put the coffee in a full sun. So the genetic programs do everything to adapt coffee for 100 years for harsh conditions.
That's why coffee is so prosperous so much in Brazilian terms of yields, because it was 100 years breeding. When we take this right in putting shaded conditions, we have to understand what type of shading we could use there to not to lost yields. If this is not well made, and the farmers lost a lot of yields, that means no prosperity. So I think the coffee does not work as a number four system, but it's because the technology is not adapted.
So as a technician, it's part of my job as a technician for this company is to find a way that suits all this advantage that I said, and do not lost a lot of yields to the farmer. It's a positive action to see the farmers and companies that work with free coffee, interested in bringing this kind of sustainable practice to Brazil, because for then it's important to have coffee to buy in the future. If they could run a business. So that's why they are doing this job.
And I understand that for me, it's fine. It's part of the job. If it's good for the farmer, for the company, for me, it's perfect to bring this opportunity to the farmers. So it's incredible to see how farmers are more interested in fine ways to still grow coffee in the near and long term.
I guess in the first episode when we talked about the war and the impacts that it could have on the supplier fertilizer and the supply of different energy requirements that a farmer might need. As these progresses, for those farmers who do are already lean into regenerative practices and agroforestry, this is going to be the moment that actually things worked out for them because they're not so dependent on those fertilizers and they will see more stability in their business model. They will see less disruption because they're focused on either creating the nutrients through the microbiome that they're growing themselves through their biophabicase or they're sourcing them from within the country. So their dependence on external factors is significantly reduced.
Am I reading that correctly? Yeah, we always will need some supply, most related to nutrients, because any kind of crop production, what we do in terms of chemistry, we take the fruits, the seeds, the grains, which are nutrients and export to outside of our farm. So we are deplating the soil. It's how agriculture works.
If you want to eat some protein from the corn or for any kind of grain or carbohydrates or any fat, this came from the ground mostly in from the air. We talk about carbon, but we take this nutrient for the ground as a research and export. So we need to put something back because if we do not do that, the crop will start to deplated the soil and we have no yields. One part of that we could supply as our organic source, which could be manure, organic residue or everything, but usually they're not enough to supply everything.
One reason is because for instance, a kilogram of manure has about 2 to 5% of nitrogen. It's a very good kind of manure is about 3%, 5% is very hard to find for manure. We have in some plants that we could have more than 5%, but manure is usually not. When we buy urea, we have 40% of nitrogen.
So we have to bring a lot of stuff to the farm, give the nitrogen back, or we could have less amount of stuff to the farm, which includes how much oil I need to bring this a lot of. Exactly. Because I can't produce all this manure in my farm. So I have to bring to somewhere where the manure will come.
If we think about animals, it's a problem for the climate too. If we start to use a lot of coal, a cattle manure for, or I forgot a poodle. I forgot the chicken word for economic science. Chicken?
Yeah, it's chicken, but there's a chicken manure. Yeah. I forget the word, but you understand. We need more animals to produce more manure until a certain point is sustained about that for a large scale.
Maybe we need to find some way to use part of manure and part of rea or any nitrogen base it to find a balance to have some kind of level of sustainability. This is one of the points that I always fight with organics in some ways, because when we talk about certification, we just need to use organic source-ed material or some rock material that was just grinded, not processed as source of some minerals. But nitrogen, we can take corn, corn, corn, and rock, grinded rock. That needs to come to other sources, but it's okay.
But when we talk about manure, for instance, in certifications, for organics, we have a lot of standards to follow. So if I use the organic material or the manure from a neighbor on the neighborhood, I need to do a lot of tests in order to have a standard for them to use that when you were there. When I buy this organic material for a company, 300 kilometers away, they already do these tests for me, so they pay for them. And usually it's kind of cheaper to buy from them, even if I spend a lot of money in the logistics to bring this material for 300 kilometers away using a truck with organic oil to bring here.
It's cheaper, and for the certification, it's required instead of buying it for my neighbor, just because he does not have a stupid certifier in the paper. It doesn't make sense. And I take the risk, because it's more technical, but I try to explain it as easily as possible. For instance, there are some minerals that for standards, for organic standards, I consider it complicated.
Well, some I understand like, how can I say that the boom boom, I forget the word in English, oh my gosh, it's a toxic metal that they used to in gold chain to forget the word. It's not a mattery. You know, I think this happened last time. It wasn't iron.
It wasn't iron. It was. It's a very heavy metal. They used to isolate like uranium caps to.
Okay. You know, I forget the name of this material, but it's a toxic metal that they use. Okay, I can't have it in the manual, but they put in the same level of these high toxic metals, like this one, I do not remember the name. It's a cadmium to cadmium too.
It's one of them. But it's like cadmium, right? Yeah. It's, yeah.
Mine. What's it in Portuguese? It's Shumbu. It's Spanish.
It's plumbu. Okay. Everyone go look it up. Yeah.
It's the one they use in nuclear facilities. Okay. It's the same material. They like build walls of that.
Okay. It's a concentrated toxic metal. Okay. And they put in the same least zinc and copper.
But zinc and copper, it's a very important meter for agriculture too. So when I buy the manual for my neighbor, usually they have zinc or copper because zinc or copper is part of organic chain. Even us need to consume some levels of zinc to survive. So they're zinc in the manure.
They're copper in the manure, but they have very low standards levels in there. So sometimes the farmer buy this, make the test, which costs a lot of money. And the levels of zinc, as the paper said, it's high enough. But I always fight with the certification to say, when I buy a zinc from a company, which is processed or not, they have high levels of zinc that then manure in a kilogram.
And I will use in the soil because plants need this to produce coffee, for instance, and they did not accept. So a farmer could buy the manure from the farmer, do the tests, and everything goes wrong. And they need to buy from the company in the end. So they prefer to buy from the company 300 kilometers away, spend a lot of energy and oil to bring it here.
And the truck needs to go back there and they put a lot of oil in the atmosphere just because some stupid certification is standard. Let's say I can use the manure for my paper that I could take it with small truck and bring here and use it. So that is one reason that sometimes certification standards do not understand the prosperity level of farming. So sometimes, and I'm not talking about organicals, this level is just some, in my opinion, some stupid standards.
Okay, organicals, I cannot use because it's a standard that it's okay. But some kind of standards, I really do not understand what they use or if they, in some point, they chalk with a farmer to understand what is possible or not. And how we deal with that? Yeah, is it uranium?
No, it's not uranium. It's what the capsule put the uranium inside. Do not the radiation spread out. Okay, we will figure it out in the, like between the episodes and we will mention it in the next episode.
So join us for episode number five, the final episode of this series. Where we're going to talk about all the geopolitical and economic stuff about this is harvest in Brazil. So the exports, tariffs and the domestic market behavior with regards to high prices. So join us for the final episode of this series, folks.
Peace of and peanut butter have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, consider supporting my beforeward our guests and advertisers on social media. Subscribe, hit the like button, leave a comment and share this episode with a friend. And if you'd like to support our work more directly, become a paid premium YouTube subscriber or Patreon backer to get early access to the show.
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