Brazil Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza Organic

The farm formerly known as Fazenda Fortaleza has been in the Barretto Family since 1850. The traditional farm with conventional farm methods was transformed by Silvia Barretto, along with her husband Marcos Croce. Their dream and mission became to convert the farm into a sustainable business that took into consideration the environment and the relationships between people while producing high quality products.

In 2009 Silvia and Marcos’ son Felipe, who had been working at a specialty coffee micro-roastery in St. Louis called Kaldi’s came to join the team. Becoming the first family member to move to the farm full time, Felipe set up a coffee lab and began separating and studying lots by varietals and processing methods.

Today FAF is an experimental and model farm for organic coffee production with a mission to embrace sustainability and regenerative farming practices. Beyond its organic certified production, FAF is a multi-functional landscape, where different shaded coffee systems, natural forests, areas in ecological restoration and other farm activities come together. The formed mosaic does not only provide habitat for biodiversity – from native bees to the threatened maned wolf – but is also an integral element of the farm’s success with the production of organic high-quality coffee.

To further increase the resilience of the coffee fields, biodiversity is not being delimited from the production sites but integrated into all coffee units from the macro to the micro level. Several agroforestry models are being tested and further developed, focusing on the integration of key species to enhance nutrient cycling, biomass production, natural pest control and optimal shade cover. In the on-farm biofactory, a variety of microorganisms are being produced and applied on the fields to combat common pests and diseases and simultaneously enhance soil resilience and plant root growth.

We have known the Croce family since 2012 and they were also the very first producer whom we bought directly from just when Nylon started. We had always had a good and honest relationship with them and Marcos even visited us late in 2024 to share his stories and coffees with our local coffee community.