EDUARDO PINHEIRO CAMPOS
FAZENDA DONA NENEM
Caracteristics of the coffee lot:
Farm Caracteristics:
Processing type: Pulped Natural
Location: Presidente Olegário
Variety: Yellow Bourbon
Region: Cerrado Mineiro
Quantity of bags: 11 Bags
Total area of the property:
Average elevation of the areas where the Area planted with coffee: 280 ha (692 acres)
coffee was harvested: 1062m
Lowest elevation: 1054 m (3458 ft)
Highest elevation: 1068 m (3504 ft)
Telephone: 034 9939 7939 / 034 9913 2070
E-mail: [email protected]
History of the farm:
Campos Family History:
The 19th Century was coming to an end. Brazil was bubbling politically. The country was
already beckoning a change from monarchy to republic. Slavery was losing power, however it
still survived due to the large production of Brazilian agriculture. It is in this scenario that the
Campos family kept strong roots in the countryside of Minas Gerais, more precisely in the
hamlet of São Francisco de Paula. The small town was until then a district of the city of
Oliveira, 160 kilometers from the capital of the state, Belo Horizonte. Brazilian coffees,
especially from Minas Gerais, were emerging as high-penetration products in foreign markets.
Mário Campos e Silva became a coffee producer of great strength in the hamlet in 1904. The
visionary country man, born in Paracatu on November 3, 1873, and rooted in São Francisco de
Paula, had advanced production for the standards of the time, at which many producers still
used slave labor.
Mário Campos e his wife, Maria José Cambraia de Campos, affectionately called “voinha”
(little grandmother) by her grandchildren, had a son, Francisco Cambraia de Campos. Not
unlike his father, Francisco also went to work on the farm, learning from a young age the field
crafts, such as administering family business and caring for the coffee fields.
Decades passed and Mário’s family grew. On May 20, 1946, grandson Eduardo Pinheiro
Campos was born. The boy was the great pride of his father, Francisco, and his mother, Maria
Conceição Pinheiro de Campos. He grew up, following the example of his father, on the farm,
accustomed to rural life. He learned in loco the handle bulls and cows, as he also learned the
challenges and secrets of coffee production. His adolescent years encouraged him to spread his
wings. Life in small São Francisco de Paula, today emancipated and with a population not
greater than 8 thousand inhabitants, is bucolic. Age 15 provoked further unrest. Eduardo was a
diligent and shrewd student. His intelligence took him to Belo Horizonte, 175 kilometers from
his father’s land and the comfort of his family.
After finishing his schooling, Eduardo Campos already had in mind which profession he
wanted to dedicate himself to. Being an engineer was in the youth’s head as the obvious path.
He studied civil engineering and became one of the major professionals in the sector in the
Brazilian southeast. Some time later, he founded a new company, Emccamp Residencial. In it,
Eduardo worked hard alongside his brother, Régis. Destiny is also undoubtable for Eduardo
Pinheiro Campos Filho and André de Souza Lima Campos, sons of Eduardo and his wife,
Dalva Maria de Souza Lima Campos. The two youths followed in the footsteps of their father
and today are civil engineers. Emccamp maintains close family ties in the workplace, making it
always pleasant and motivating.
However destiny would demand a special look at coffee growing. Still young, Eduardo Campos
received a parental inheritance, a good piece of land in Presidente Olegário, a city in Minas
Gerais 430 kilometers from the capital, Belo Horizonte. The farm was christened “Dona
Neném,” in homage to his mother.
As short time after discovering himself as an engineer, Eduardo Campos rediscovered himself
as an agro-businessman. Coffee permanently returned to the hands of the man from Minas
Gerais. “I started working with coffee production in the Cerrado region in 1977. In other parts
of the Cerrado there was already coffee production, although in a timid way,” boasts Campos.
In Patrocínio and Araguari there were some acquaintances from Oliveira who were using the
fertile land (albeit still untamed) of the Cerrado region to raise cattle and to develop coffee
cultivation. However, in Presidente Olegário coffee fields were a novelty.
The first farm is that with the highest production. With a total area of 600 hectares, the São
João Grande farm has 375 hectares devoted to coffee. Dona Neném, with 800 hectares, has 230
hectares separated for producing coffee. The farm is also strong in cattle raising. Boa Sorte is
another property on which beef cattle are raised. Moreover, the farm is the largest of the three
ranches belonging to the Campos family, with 1900 hectares, in addition to being the only one
there is not even a single coffee tree. In total, there are 2500 head of zebu nelore, a rustic,
strong and well-acclimatized kind of cattle. The zebu are a species of Indian origin that arrived
in Brazil at the beginning of the 20th century. Currently, the Brazilian herd is recognized as one
of the best meats on the world market. Mr. Campos’ nelores are part of it.
The 3300 hectares are not only used for growing coffee and raising zebu. A part of the three
ranches is separated for subsistence agriculture. Many of the foods consumed by the family and
by Eduardo Campos’ collaborators are grown on the farms in Presidente Olegário. Of course,
some hectares are untouchable, solely for environmental preservation.
The environment is priority number one. Because of this, Campos replanted a good part of the
native vegetation of the region, making up for some of the environmental impact caused by the
cattle herd and by the coffee. It is not just the trees that recompose the scenery, the waters are
also part of the natural protection. Eduardo Campos recovers Permanent Preservation Areas
(APPs). The APPs (as they are commonly referred to in Brazil) are limits drawn between the
edges of streams, lakes or rivers and the start of crops. This distance maintains the high quality
of the waters and guarantees the future of watersheds.
The strict environmental laws followed to the letter, added to good agricultural production
practices, management, and attention to society guarantee the three farms important
international certification seals. Boa Sorte, Dona Neném and São João Grande are certified by
UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance. In addition to extra concern for the environment, the
crops receive totally monitored anti-pest treatment. The patios, rest boxes, depots and all the
other sectors of the farm are duly sanitized, without any risk of contaminating the beans. The
workers are well received and receive all benefits prescribed by Brazilian labor law.
Another important step for maintaining the certifications is the harvest period. Campos explains
how he is able to perform a selective harvest, seeking high quality of the berries. “My harvest is
done by machines that perform a selective harvest. The choice is make by the degree of
maturation of the beans, which is differentiated by the weight and density of each seed. We
regulate the machine to pick only the so-called “cherry,” leaving the green coffee to ripen on
the tree. Days later, we return and pick those beans that stayed in the coffee fields, that were
green and are now ripe, at the ideal point to harvest. After this second pass, some beans still
remain, and these are picked by hand, which we call the manual re-pass. This entire process is
to obtain a quality crop.”
Another point of attention is the renovation of the coffee fields. The coffee trees are renewed to
guarantee the strength of the berries. There are greenhouses with seedlings grown for
replacement, substituting old plants. “We have a renovation program, and each year I renew
10% of my crops. The Cerrado is a region that has many variations, it is a place with higher
average temperatures that other regions like, for example, the South of Minas Gerais, and
because of this some farmers, like us, have for 10 to 12 years chosen to renew the crops,”
Campos relates. After about a decade, the yield of the tree starts to decline and renovation
guarantees a younger harvest with more beans and higher-quality berries.
All of the work with redoubled caution is rewarded. Eduardo Campos’ production has
repeatedly figured in prominent positions in competitions that prize the best coffees of the
country. The family’s coffee achieved third place in the 13th Illy contest, was the winner the
4th Brazil Rainforest Alliance Certified Coffees Competition, was a finalist of the Minas Gerais
Coffee Quality Contest in 2010, 2011, and 2012, was the winner of the Cerrado Coffees
Festival held in Tokyo, Japan in 2011 and 2012, furthermore in the Minas Gerais Cerrado was
third place in the Top Prize of the Region, and was a finalist in several Brazil Specialty Coffee
Association (BSCA) competitions, including for three straight years, 2001, 2002, and 2003, and
now in 2013.
Note that one cannot achieve good production overnight. The coffee crops provide secular
sustenance for the family. It is a tradition coupled with innovation, which enriches local
production and the strength of Brazilian coffee. “It is a pleasure to work with coffee. First,
because it is a family tradition. Only on my part, I have been in coffee for more than 40 years.
My father, 70, and my grandfather who produced for a long time…We can say that coffee has
been part of the family for 100 years. That’s more than a century of tradition in coffee farming,
and always innovating,” Campos calculates.
Such quality is savored by coffee connoisseurs on, at least, three continents. The 70 thousand
bags produced in the last three years reached millions of consumers in Italy, Japan, Israel, the
Netherlands and in many other countries. It is certain that many others will taste the delight that
is the “cherry” planted and well cared for on Campos’ land, this special flavor of quality, that
has been sampled since the 19th century.
Coffee processing system:
This is cited in the history, but I mention that all the processes are done in the washer: Natural,
pulped natural, demucilated natural, washed.
Concern about quality:
This is cited in the history. However, I comment that concern about quality begins before the
harvest and all the plots are analyzed both in the physical and sensorial aspects before the
harvest itself in order to find the ideal harvest point and the best process to be used.
All the lots are separated and tracked using names giving according to their scores.
All machinery is prepared to receive and separate all the lots, rotating dryers that use the
rotation methodology for drying, processing machines with settings for each type of process,
latest-generation densimetric tables, high-capacity, high-efficiency electronic graders, in
addition to storage totally protected from light and humidity.