Introducing Eduardo Ferriera de Sousa, fifth generation coffee producer and owner of Agroforestry farm, Pedra Preta. Eduardo is leading the way in his innovative approach to regenerative farming, and is an inspiration for coffee producers in Brazil and worldwide. We are incredibly proud to welcome coffee from Fazenda Pedra Preta into our House range, and we hope this is the start of a long and rewarding relationship.My name is Eduardo Ferriera de Sousa, I’m a fifth generation coffee producer. My family has been growing coffee in the same region of Brazil for over a century. The history of Fazenda Pedra Preta is very close to the history of my family. My grandfather was from a very humble beginning, he lived in a small ranch in the mountains. As the eldest son, he was in charge of taking his siblings to school, the only school in the region in the 1930s. The only way to the school was by crossing the coffee farms in the mountains. He was a very visionary man - he would sit on the top of mountains and dream of one day owning his own farm and planting coffee.
After 50 years of working in the coffee industry, he bought Pedra Preta farm. His only son turned 18 in the same year, it was the first farm that they worked on together. Today, my uncle is the one in charge of the family legacy, and I am running Fazenda Pedra Preta. This story is an inspiration for me to keep the legacy alive. The way that I see it, for me to put my stamp on it, is to protect the good things from this very long legacy, by bringing all of the new technology and modern concepts to coffee cultivation. We still have the challenge of providing food for a population that is growing fast, but in a completely different context. With extreme conditions and climate phenomena. My mission is to build resilience by combining these family values of tradition and good practice, with new technologies.
My Grandpa passed away in 2012, whilst I was at university. When I graduated in 2016, my father was running the farm and it was the year of a terrible drought. So I started my coffee journey in the midst of extreme conditions. Coffee prices and yield were not great that year - we were in a tough situation. I wanted to help the business by implementing new processes and modern practices. I realised that I couldn’t help the business if I couldn’t find a new way of farming that addressed climate change. But to be honest, no-one was paying attention to climate change, it was understood as an exception. I tried to talk to my family, the coops and everyone in the coffee industry that I had access to and it seemed that no-one was paying attention to climate change. This was the challenge I had to overcome to keep the legacy of Fazenda Pedra Preta alive.
I studied a masters degree in coffee economics and science in Italy, and learnt about agroforestry and regenerative farming on the course. Most of the people studying on the course were in the same situation as I was, and came from traditional coffee families worldwide: Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, Ethiopia and Yemen. What I realised was that everyone was facing the same challenges of climate change, but with different outcomes. I finished the course with a clear vision; to combine these techniques and knowledge with the traditional Brazilian legacy of cultivating coffee. It has been my mission since then and is what I have been doing for the last five years at Fazenda Pedra Preta.
