Agroforestry Coffee: The Café dos Contos Case, Part II
Translated from Portuguese. Original published by PRETATERRA.
When the partnership between Café dos Contos and PRETATERRA began in 2018, the coffee plantation on the property in Monte Sião, Minas Gerais, until then a monoculture, was converted into a regenerative, biodiverse agroforestry system.
Recognition
In a short time, despite its small scale, the system we planted with Paulo and Mari from Café dos Contos became a benchmark, gaining national attention by winning the "Small-Scale Sustainability" category of the Novo Agro Award in 2019. An initiative of Esalq-USP and Santander, the award recognizes sustainable initiatives in agribusiness.
According to Paulo, "for us it was really great to see a financial institution look at agroforestry systems and reward initiatives like ours; in a way, it is also a seal of economic viability".
Science communication
Also in 2019, we presented an abstract at the 4th World Congress on Agroforestry in Montpellier, France. You can find this and other abstracts presented at the congress in the Book of Abstracts, available here.
Since then, Paulo and Mari have partnered with the Federal Institute of Southern Minas Gerais in Inconfidentes, opening their doors to agronomy, environmental management and biology students, professors and researchers to study soil, carbon retention, water, regenerative agriculture indicators and more.
Agroforestry is life!
Some results are already being harvested: agronomist Roger Fernandes recently wrote his final thesis comparing insect diversity in the agroforestry systems PRETATERRA planted in 2018 with other areas.
Very interestingly, the agroforestry systems showed invertebrate abundance and diversity similar to conserved forest and higher than areas of natural regeneration, reforestation and pasture. Agroforestry brings the logic of the forest into a production system, creating an environment in which ecological relationships balance out and biodiversity shows itself in all its forms.
Want to know more about the project? Read our first post on how it all began here. Visit their Instagram @cafedoscontos, where they always share harvest news. And if you want to enjoy this coffee at home, click here.
