Brazil Futures

This is the most 'standard' tasting coffee on our menu, but perhaps the one we're most excited about. We've been looking to increase our Brazil buying impact for the 5 years since we started Skylark. Circumstances conspired to make this the perfect year for it. We love a lot of things about Brazil as a coffee origin: It has a strong minimum wage, a strong domestic consumption market to support producers, and we have more than a decade's worth of relationships and buying experience there. This Brazil 'Futures' is a new product line for Skylark that will keep a consistent flavor profile of Melted Chocolate and Macademia whilst sourcing from various smallholder farmers who can benefit from partnering with Skylark. You can read more about the mechanisms we're using below. It's a little nerdy, but very cool. We think you'll love it... It's the perfect 'coffee flavored coffee' with a big dose of impact.

Elevation: 1000 Meters above Sea Level (average)
Varietal: Various
Cup score: 82
Price paid per kg: £7.50
Process: Fully natural, cherries are sorted, then dried on patios

Read more about the entire deal down below:

Replacing good with great

We’re moving away from our most purchased coffee, our go-to Brazil Santa Rosa that’s always been our best value for money. Why would we do that? Because we think we’ve found a way to get better values for our money. This week, we’re launching a new core Brazil that is more chocolatey, affordable in this market, and delivers a far greater impact for farmers and the environment.

We’re calling this coffee Brazil Futures — it’s about financial security for the people who grow it. As a core ingredient in all our blends, this coffee can reach a lot of people in the supply chain and among coffee drinkers too.

Here’s how it works: Brazil Futures comes from small family farms, which are typically more ecologically sustainable than Brazil’s large coffee plantations. The growers are members of a small and relatively unknown association called Associação da Barra, and we’ve sourced the coffee through Minasul, a medium-sized cooperative that is very clever about using coffee “futures” contracts to empower producers, not just themselves.

How to solve farmers staying poor while the market goes up

You might have heard; the price for green coffee is the highest it’s ever been – almost 3 times the average price of the last 15 years. This is causing chaos in the coffee industry, and those futures contracts play a key role. What follows is a little technical, but complex problems require some explanation, so here we go:

All coffee is bought and sold on the Futures or ‘C’ market at the stock exchange in New York. Historically, this has been used to make stock-traders and big corporations rich while keeping coffee prices low and farmers poor. Since the price for coffee has recently tripled, however, some of the biggest coffee traders in the world are in trouble essentially because papering over bad ‘futures’ bets and rapid growth speculation takes cash, and that’s in short supply with each sack of coffee costing 2-3x what it did 16 months ago. We’re seeing exporter/importers sell out to Saudi wealth funds and oil companies, or file for bankruptcy protection including the exporting partners we used to work with in Brazil. 

Meanwhile, small producers struggle the most in volatile markets so this is a key moment to choose our partners carefully and protect the less advantaged.

Unlocking market power

Here at Skylark, we’re now big enough to buy full shipping containers of Brazilian coffee, which unlocks a new phase of work with trusted partners like Minasul to increase our impact beyond just what we pay for coffee. Instead of using the futures market to speculate for their own profit, Minasul allows farmers to convert their coffee from futures contracts into physical coffee (and vice versa) at a time that benefits them, much like stock traders do. This is unusual, and means that smaller farmers have more control and can boost their income in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise be able. Minasul also sells most of their coffee within Brazil rather than exporting. This means that their business is more stable, and allows them to access quick cash to pay farmers promptly – a huge deal if you’re a coffee grower.

Both Minasul and Skylark are also paying premiums to the farmers as well as donating some much needed equipment and tech for the growers’ cooperative. We’ll be increasing these donations throughout the coming years using our pledge to put £1 per kilo sold into grower empowerment projects. We’re then importing the coffee through our friends at Falcon who understand the work we’re doing at Skylark and brilliantly support these kinds of arrangements. 

Environmental potential

The final argument for Brazil Futures centres on the ecological advantage of small family farms, whether certified organic or not. One of the growers, Arcanjo Alexadre Alves, is carrying on a type of attentive farming begun by his grandfather in the 1980s. Another, Afonso Donizetti Silva, began with just 145 coffee trees, producing 4 bags of coffee (two for him, two for his wife). 

These are the kinds of smallholders we’d like to support while buying a large percentage of their total production.

Don’t get us wrong – our longstanding Brazil Santa Rosa was an affordable coffee from a large-scale producer that pays workers well and offsets carbon emissions. That was good! But it seems more ‘Skylark’ to support farmers with less of their own security. That’s even better.

Welcome to Brazil Futures.