Ethel

Story

A relatively new hill classification, incorporating 95 hills, tors and trigs in the Peak District. It is named after the environmental campaigner and pioneer of the countryside movement, Ethel Haythornthwaite, who played an important role in the establishment of the UK’s national parks. This Brazilian natural coffee comes from a family farm, Fazenda Nunes, in Patrocínio, Cerrado Mineiro. Osmar Pereira Nunes, the patriarch of the Nunes family, began the family tradition of farming with cattle raising. In 1984, Osmar’s son, Osmar Junior, planted 10 hectares of coffee on their Cerrado Mineiro farm. The next year, he planted another 7 hectares and continued expanding his coffee farm year after year for over 30 years. He says “There isn't greater fulfillment for the producer than arrive at the farm and smell the flowering coffee.” Today, the third generation of Nunes men operates the farm. Gabriel, the son of Osmar Junior, is an agronomist who applies his knowledge of coffee farming to the family business. Recently, Gabriel and Osmar Junior saw the changing market and shifted their coffee production from bulk commercial cultivation to more quality-focused specialty production. “Today it is necessary to balance the social, environmental and financial pillars of a farm for the business to thrive. Planting nowadays is about ensuring quality, making the correct soil management in order to reduce the use of inputs, having environmental awareness and understanding what the market seeks in the harvest,” Gabriel says. The natural extension of this focus is attaining Sucafina’s IMPACT verification. The IMPACT program ensures that coffee is produced in accordance with specific social and environmental standards. The Nunes family got their IMPACT verification as a way to confirm that their coffee is produced in socially and environmentally friendly ways and to reach new markets for sustainable coffees.