Coopfam - Cooperativa dos Agricultores Familiares de Poço Fundo e Região Ltda

More support for organic and fair trade coffee farmers

Brazil

Fair trade

Trade in products that have been certified and carry a fair trade label. An example of this is a farmer’s cooperative that collectively sells its cocoa to a fair trade organization.

Cooperativa dos Agricultores Familiares de Poço Fundo e Região Ltda (Coopfam) is a cooperative of coffee farmers who are fair trade and organic certified. Over the years, Coopfam has seen its membership grow consistently, reaching over 400 by 2017. Around 20% of production is destined for the local market, with the remainder exported, either directly or via intermediaries.

Coopfam was created in the 1980s in Poço Fundo, a small town in the state of Minas Gerais, which has the ideal climate and altitude for specialty coffee cultivation. Its founding was part of a church-led movement to reduce rural to urban migration.

The cooperative is fully equipped to trade and roast coffee, including quality testing, processing, roasting, packing, storing, tracking and transporting. In 1998 Coopfam was the first institution in Brazil to receive Fairtrade certification. In 2002 it also became a certified organic coffee trader.

Coopfam uses the premiums received from the sale of its own organic coffee brand, Café Feminino, to carry out its MOBI project (Mulheres Organizadas Buscando Independência), The project brings together women to produce handicrafts from coffee sub-products and exchange techniques for growing roses, as a way of generating additional income between harvests.

Cooperativa dos Agricultores Familiares de Poço Fundo e Região Ltda has been an Oikocredit partner since 2017.