About This Coffee
Café Bioma is the creation of Flávio Márcio and Marcelo Nogueira, two agribusiness entrepreneurs who grew up in families of rural producers and are united by their mutual love for coffee cultivation. Their business focuses on two key pillars: producing top-quality coffee and implementing sustainable agricultural practices.
At Fazenda Bioma, cover crops are planted between coffee rows to protect and enrich the soil with organic matter. Flavio and Marcelo produce their own fertilizer using processing byproducts and other organic materials, reducing waste and improving soil health while combating global warming. To further support sustainability, they’ve introduced avocado cultivation to prevent erosion, retain essential nutrients, and diversify income streams, all while preserving 63% of their land as protected natural areas.
From cultivation to post-harvest, Fazenda Bioma integrates the expertise of seasoned professionals to ensure excellence at every stage. Their efforts have earned them top recognitions, with Bioma Café consistently ranking among the best in regional and national coffee contests since 2016 and even reaching world stages. Most notably, they achieved 1st place in this year’s Cup of Excellence in Experimental category, a true testament to their commitment and passion.
Cultivation
Nestled in the Cerrado Mineiro region, the first coffee-growing area in Brazil to receive a Designation of Origin, Fazenda Bioma produces coffee with distinct qualities. Located in northwest Minas Gerais, this region is celebrated for its consistently high-quality coffee production.
Flávio and Marcelo cultivate varieties like Arara, Paraíso, and Catucaí, maintaining an ideal balance of soil nutrients to reduce dependence on chemical inputs. Thanks to their hard work and dedication, Fazenda Bioma achieves consistent, high yields year after year.
Harvest & Post-Harvest
At Fazenda Bioma, every stage of production is conducted on-site to guarantee exceptional quality. Cherry is harvested at peak ripeness and carefully dried in the sun or greenhouses, ensuring precise moisture levels before milling and export.
This meticulous process, paired with sustainable practices and an unwavering focus on quality, makes Fazenda Bioma’s coffee a true standout in the world of specialty coffee.
About Arara
Arara is a newer variety from Brazil that’s prized for its high-scoring cup profile combined with resilience and productivity. The variety is a cross between Yellow Catuai and Obatã, which is itself a Timor hybrid. It grows as a yellow fruit with large-sized beans. The variety has high resistance to Coffee Leaf Rust (CLR), good productivity, high quality potential and compact trees that make it easier to harvest. Since its release, competitions have seen this coffee top out at low 90s cup scores.
Coffee in Brazil
Just under 40% of all coffee in the world is produced in Brazil - around 3.7 million metric tons annually. With so much coffee produced, it’s no wonder that the country produces a wide range of qualities. Brazil produces everything from natural Robusta, to the neutral and mild Santos screen 17/18, to the distinctive Rio Minas 17/18. In recent years, Brazilian producers have also begun investing more heavily in specialty coffee production. Through our in-country partners in Brazil, including our sister company, we are able to provide a wide range of Brazilian coffees to our clients: from macrolot to microlot.
Today, the most prolific coffee growing regions of Brazil are Espirito Santo, São Paulo, Minas Gerais, and Bahia. Most Brazilian coffee is grown on large farms that are built and equipped for maximizing production output through mechanical harvesting and processing. The relatively flat landscape across many of Brazil’s coffee regions combined with high minimum wages has led most farms to opt for this type of mechanical harvesting over selective hand-picking.
In the past, mechanization meant that 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 mechanized’ harvesting may be used, where ripe coffee is picked using a derriçadeira – a sort of mechanized rake that uses vibration to harvest ripe cherry. A tarp is spanned between coffee trees to capture the cherry as it falls.
With the aid of these newer, more selective technologies, there’s a growing number of farms who are increasingly concerned with – and able to deliver - cup quality.