Back in 1946 Frank Sinatra famously sang ‘down among the Brazillians, coffee beans grow by the billions’ and 80 years on this certainly still holds true. In fact a 2026 bumper harvest signals (to paraphrase Sinatra) ‘an awful lot of coffee’ coming out of Brazil this year.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the vast coffee growing lands of Cerrado Mineiro, one of Brazil’s most productive coffee growing regions. This massive plateau in the northwestern state of Minas Gerais spans over 50 municipalities with coffee cultivated on 234,000 hectares. Coffee producers here have embraced mass mechanisation and irrigation with open arms. This is coffee farming on a huge, almost industrial scale and so unlike the small coffee farms and producer communities of the rest of Latin America. But that’s Brazil for you. Everything about this country seems magnified. There are single farms here that are able to produce more coffee in a year than the entire nation of Bolivia.
Today Cerrado’s 4,500 coffee producers account for almost 18% of Brazil’s Arabica coffee production. The region has been famous for volume and consistency for years - Cerrado lots are known for their low acidity and sweet, chocolatey profile. Interestingly Cerrado coffees were the first in Brazil to achieve a protected ‘Designation of Origin’ (much like Champagne in France and Parmagiano in Italy).
Now the region is also becoming increasingly known for speciality coffee. Young enterprising producers are embracing regenerative agriculture, new processing techniques and experimental fermentations. This producer-driven speciality market is super exciting and it was a real treat to have the opportunity to finally visit Cerrado at the kind invitation of our Brazilian importers and friends Bossa Coffee to see coffee production here up close, learn more about regenerative agriculture, visit the Expocacer producers and get an insight into the 2026 harvest.
To reach Cerrado we hopped on a short internal flight from Sao Paulo to the city of Uberlândia. Known as the ‘Gateway to Cerrado’ or more affectionately by its nickname ‘Udi’, the drive here from Sao Paulo takes a grueling eight or nine hours so we were glad of the shortcut. As we came in to land a huge patchwork of red, green and brown fields spread out below us. This is, undoubtedly, big farming country. Soon we were driving on straight, fast roads that cut through forests of pine and eucalyptus, huge fields sown with sorghum and sunflowers and then the familiar dark, glossy green of neatly planted rows of coffee trees.
The Cerrado Coffee Growers Cooperative (Expocacer) was set up 33 years ago by a small group of coffee producers who used to meet up in the town of Patrocinio. The organisation now represents 740 producer members and and is one of the largest coffee cooperatives in Cerrado with a designated speciality coffee section as a key part of their business.The Expocacer headquarters are located in downtown Patrocinio, a classic agricultural town of wide streets, evangelical churches, warehouses, pharmacies and car salesrooms. The evening we arrived Sandra and Lilia from Expocacer treated us to delicious pizza washed down with ice cold bottles of Sol beer and cans of Guarana soda and orange slices. It felt so good to be back in Minas again and in such good company too (big shoutout to fellow UK roasters Rins, Ninth, Higgins and Saint Espresso and of course Bruna and Emma from Bossa - you really were the best of company!)
We headed to Expocacer the following morning where the large and airy modern building Includes offices, a cafe, and even an auditorium for presentations. With the harvest in full swing the place was buzzing with activity. Computer screens on the walls flickered with the fluctuating C price and the Dollar to Real exchange rate. Rows of agents were sitting behind desks in their glass fronted offices meeting the stream of producers who were walking in and out dropping off samples of ‘bica’ (a coffee sample that has yet to be milled or sorted). It felt like the beating heart of Brazilian coffee production.
As Francisco Guimarães one of the Expocacer producers told me. “In Cerrado we have great volume and great coffee - it’s the best place in Brazil to grow coffee” Francisco’s family have been living and farming in Cerrado for an amazing 200 years, Initially cattle farmers, they only started coffee production in 2010. His three farms now produce an astonishing 30,000 bags annually including many distinctive and delicious microlots.
There’s a magic quality to the light in Cerrado despite, or maybe because of, the flatness of it all. Unlike Pinhal to the south the farms here have not been broken up, sub divided by inheritance over generations. The farmers that moved up here in the 1970s and 80s were children of immigrants here to start anew, many came from the state of Parana where the devastating frosts of the 1970s had destroyed their coffee crops in the south. Once they realised that they could tame the famously nutrient-poor and acidic native Cerrado soil to suit coffee by adding limestone (a technique known as liming) as well as introducing mechanized irrigation systems, coffee production in the region exploded. Cerrado’s famously high but flat land meant mechanisation on an enormous scale was possible.
In spite of the mass mechanisation of agriculture, the nature, forests and wild land we saw here in Cerrado seemed surprisingly still diverse and our travels through the area were punctuated with cries of 'Toucan’ and ‘Eagle’. The Brazilian Forest Code legally mandates that coffee farms located in the Cerrado biome are to keep 20% to 35% of their total property area as a Legal Reserve covered in native vegetation. Landowners cannot convert these designated reserve zones into agricultural production fields or pasture. Only low-impact, sustainable management is allowed under strict regulatory guidelines.
As we travelled out to the farms and spoke with producers talk was dominated by the unseasonal rains that had recently fallen in June and July (months that it normally would never rain in Cerrado) The rains have caused some destruction by knocking coffee cherries off the trees and onto the ground where they can only be sold as lower quality but really the main effect was to cause the cherries to go from under-ripe to almost dried on the trees themselves. Most producers seem quite relaxed about this and simply harvest the dried cherries straight from the trees. But there was no escaping the fact that rains have certainly done some damage to the quality of this year’s harvest and the availability of higher quality lots has, according to Bossa, taken something of a hit. What’s more the extra flowering triggered by those rains and the looming threat of a super El Niño seems to be causing genuine concern for next year’s harvest,
We headed east out of Patrocinio stopping off for a leisurely roadside lunch at my favourite Brazilian style restaurant - a ‘buffet livre’ that serves up as much beans, rice, fresh salads and grilled meats that you can eat for a set price. Afterwards we turned off the tarmac and onto a dusty track past a herd of hump-backed white cows and drove towards Elizabete Martin’s farm Fazenda Douradinhos. Two long red legged birds darted across the track in front of us. Almost comical in appearance and gait these were the iconic Seriema - a large, territorial ground dwelling bird that is the official symbol of the state of Minas Gerais. In fact Cerrado is exactly the habitat these birds survive best in with its wide open savannah and grasslands through which they can reach speeds of up to 30mph eating insects and even small snakes which they impressively dispatch by slamming them against the ground.
We found Elizabete’s two sons busy at work on the patios of the farm with a large milling tractor-like machine that was processing the dried naturals, removing the husks and sending them down a shute into waiting large bags. It was noisy, dusty and hard work. Later we dropped down to the small farmhouse surrounded by grassy lawns and overlooking rows of neat bourbon trees where we were treated to cups of coffee and coca cola as well mounds of pao de queijo - the famous Brazilian cheese bread that was to become an absolute staple of our trip. In fact I don't think a day went by without eating at least two or three of these delicious chewy, cheesy small rolls with a unique texture that manages to be both crunchy on the outside and deliciously doughy on the inside at the same time.
Back in 2023 Expocacer became the first cooperative to receive a regenerative certification label.The label verifies the origin and quality of coffee produced using regenerative practices that increase biodiversity, protect water resources, preserve soil health and enhance the resilience of agricultural systems. Expocacer now has almost 80 certified members. The first of which was Fazenda Horizontina.
Customers of Glen Lyon may remember a delicious anaerobic lot we had from Horizontina a few years ago. So it was a real pleasure to be able to visit the farm the following day. Owners Fernando and Elesandra Beloni (who, no kidding, loves the nature on the farm so much that she is frequently pictured on her instagram tracking wolves or with a snake or two in her arms!) showed us round. In order to achieve the certification for its regenerative agricultural practices Fernando explained that they worked to restore the farm’s soil, improve biodiversity among natural pollinators and increase soil carbon capture. The farm was already using many regenerative practices and had already reduced the use of chemical pesticides. The Beloni’s pioneering work has inspired many other producers in the region to adopt similar practices.
Our last night in Cerrado will stay with me forever. We arrived at Fazenda Nunes late in the afternoon where Osmar Nunes and son Gabriel took us out to see their beautiful Gesha coffee trees grown under tall leafy shade trees and explained their regenerative practices. Returning back to the farmhouse just as the sun was setting, everything had turned golden, long shadows streaked across the patios where gorgeous natural microlots were drying in the last of the day's sun. Fellow coffee producers and neighbours were gathering for a barbecue, children and dogs played outside under palm trees, babies were balanced on hips, there was ice cold beer on tap and platefuls of beans and slices of Picanha steak passed around long wooden tables. This really is the life, I thought. Maybe best summed up in a text I wrote back home the following day: “It’s such an old fashioned way of life here. We had an asado last night with all the producers and their families. Everyone in leather boots and hats, beautiful wives, endless children. All tanned and relaxed. Epic quantities of beef and beans. Have cupped some incredible coffees. Haven’t eaten a vegetable in days!”
From Cerrado we travelled south to Pinhal but more of that in my next post…
