Cooperativa Regional de Cafeicultores em Guaxupé (Cooxupé) is the biggest coffee cooperative in Brazil and one of the 37 founding members of the 4C Association. In December 2011, Alexandre Vieira Costa Monteiro, Manager of the 4C Program at Cooxupé visited the 4C Secretariat. During an interview, he talked about his long-standing experience working with the 4C system and the main sustainability challenges farmers are confronted with.
Cooxupé has a total of 12,000 members. Together, members cover a total production area of 220,608 hectares. Cooxupé receives the coffee which is produced in the Cerrado, South of Minas Gerais state and North of South Paulo state. For 2012, Cooxupé expects to receive around 5 million coffee bags.
Cooxupé is believed to be the largest coffee cooperative in the world. Last year (2010), Cooxupé was also the largest exporter of coffee in Brazil. In 2011, we also expect to take the leading position – we directly exported over 2,4 million coffee bags in 2011.
We are working with 65 agronomists to provide technical support and extension services to our members.
80% of Cooxupé's members are smallholder farmers. In the Brazilian context, a farmer who has less than 20 hectares is considered a smallholder – they produce on average less than 500 coffee bags.
As a 4C Unit, Cooxupé has a manager in charge of the 4C program who is supported by 3 agronomists- coordinators covering the three regions mentioned above. The Coordinators and I (the 4C program manager) are responsible for the program management. Together we provide trainings to the rest of the agronomists/technicians in the different regions. Cooxupé periodically organizes group events for its members. In each of our 16 branches we organize a major event once a year called “Demonstrative Units”. Those events last several days. All the family members participate, including the farmer's wives and children. Most of Cooxupé's members are men. Farmers are taken to the field and they are showed how to apply the best agricultural practices.
In parallel, Cooxupé also organizes training sessions for women on issues such as personal health and the health of their children, how to take care of their coffee trees etc. The events also include workshops, games, and theatre activities for children etc. to learn about sustainability.
We also organize numerous Fields Days in our branches with the communities and schools in the rural areas in order to be closer to the coffee farmers.
Over the years, Cooxupé had been providing training, support and assistance to its members. When the 4C program emerged, we saw it as a very good opportunity to further increase our work in the field. We then decided to turn into a 4C Unit. Now for every action we do, we talk about sustainability practices, about traceability, quality and all the other principles that are covered in the 4C Code of Conduct.
Some people think that “4C is easy”. But this is wrong – our experience has shown us that it is not easy to reach a green level for each of the principles of the Code. In November 2011, Cooxupé got the report of the 4C Verifiers which showed that our Unit has not eradicated all its Red Practices. Despite all the work we have done, verifiers have identified 4 red practices that need to be eradicated. Cooxupé takes this very seriously. As soon as we received the report, we immediately started working to solve these issues. We signed a partnership with SENAR (Serviço Nacional de Aprendizagem Rural), a Brazilian Governmental Organization. SENAR has long standing experience teaching and training small holder farmers in Brazil. It will offer Cooxupé four courses to deal with the 4 red practices that the verifiers identified. These courses include:
Besides this, Cooxupé has also hired an experienced marketing company in Brazil to develop communication products to better reach out to our members.
Cooxupé first received its 4C Licence in 2007 and farmers very much welcomed the 4C project. However, in 2008 the farmers felt somewhat deceived because there was no demand for their 4C Compliant Coffee. However, demand is taking off again. Industry representatives contacted Cooxupé in 2010 and expressed their interest in 4C Compliant Coffee as they were working on their sustainability programs. Our clients want Cooxupé to continue with 4C. Sales were already much better in 2011 and we expect this trend will continue in the coming years. Farmers are excited about this new development as they see their efforts are being rewarded.
Contrary to certification standards, 4C works in a very inclusive way. If a farmer is doing something wrong, something which is not yet sustainable, he will not be excluded. The 4C system tells farmers: join us and we will work together to help you improve your practices. Thus, 4C is the first step for farmers towards applying sustainable production practices.
