Luiz Roberto Saldanha Rodrigues | Modern Coffee Grower

Luiz Roberto Saldanha Rodrigues is one of the world's best coffee growers. His farm, Fazenda California, lies below the Tropic of Capricorn, outside the tropics, a geography that presents both opportunities and real challenges to take advantage of this unique terroir. To do this, Luiz and his wife, Flavia, along with their team at Fazenda California, collect and analyze data—tracking everything from soil temperatures to leaf-area-to-fruit ratios—while implementing new technologies and innovations like producing their own local microbiota to fortify plant immune systems, improve nutrient absorption, and increase coffee quality.

Perhaps most important is what Luiz is doing outside his farm: passing on his deep knowledge and experience to coffee growers across the globe.


In your opinion, what differentiates the coffee produced on your farm?

What differentiates us is the involvement of both my wife and me in doing the best we can with the resources we have, in all stages of the process, combined with a systemic and comprehensive vision that all stages are relevant.

We are involved with details at every stage of the process. We always look for more scientific knowledge, research studies, and quality information to apply at each step. Many farms share our passion, but the difficulties we've overcome over time have set us apart. We always try to add a little more passion, dedication, and commitment.

You’ve implemented fermentation and other post-harvest techniques. What has this added to the quality of your coffee?

I have been studying harvest and post-harvest techniques since 2007/2008. In this pursuit, I have traveled to several producing countries—Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Panama, and Colombia—and had an excellent experience. I also acquired excellent knowledge through CQI (Coffee Quality Institute) processing programs.

From this education, I gained a great theoretical basis, but the theory is one thing, and its application to our unique reality is another. What techniques lead to the development of differentiated sensorial profiles, and how can these be replicated under the diverse conditions we face here in Paraná?

We don't have only one type of product or only one sensory profile that characterizes a region; we need to understand the peculiarities of each region—in our case, the subtropical climate with different seasons, temperatures, humidity, and sunlight conditions. This, combined with our various coffee cultivars and processing techniques, makes it possible to develop very distinct sensory profiles—different products that can be offered to different clients and markets.

There is still a lot of room for evolution. My dream is that one day we can achieve post-harvest planning that is even more similar to the wine industry, planning that takes into account climatic conditions, cultivars, and the type of clients we have to serve so that we can choose with more assertiveness the types of processing methods to use. We have started implementing this, but we are still taking small steps.

You are creating your own microbiota. How has this experience been? Do you already feel an improvement in plant health and productivity?

For three years, we have been studying and applying microorganisms in our production cycle. We have a small biofactory for the on-farm production of microorganisms. Basically, we propagate specific bacteria and fungi for different purposes—some for vigor, some for rooting, and some for integrated pest and disease management.

Using biological products brings more vigor to the plants, and it has been scientifically proven that it increases the plant's defense system, making it much more resilient. We have many difficulties with climate instability—too much rain, too little rain, too much sun, too little sun, wind, pests, and diseases. If we have more vigorous plants with better immune systems, they will respond better to these environmental stresses.

Another characteristic would be the much more controlled use of pesticides. With biological products, we can reduce the use of pesticides since we have more vigorous plants with better rooting and with a more protected leaf area. This also leads to the plants synthesizing more compounds to fill the fruit, giving us more raw material to be used during processing and creating more richness and complexity in the final product.

Your production is located below the Tropic of Capricorn, a non-traditional area for coffee planting. How did you adapt to be able to produce in this region?

By understanding the climatic and soil conditions of the state [Paraná]: fertile soils with high production potential; four well-defined seasons, each of which needs to be managed in a different way; a very short harvest window; and unique challenges in processing and drying. So, we customized a production system completely adapted to our region, with a system of scheduled pruning where the coffee produces one year and is pruned the next. We have a specialized team trained to manage the plants— managing the coffee plantation as if it were a vineyard. Each plant is pruned four or five times a year by a group of women trained to do this pruning, and this same team performs our selective harvest of microlots. After the harvest—done both through mechanized harvesting and a manual selective harvest—we apply various processes throughout the post-harvest, including various types of fermentation and controlled drying.

So the adaptation to the region happened first of all by understanding how things happened here, by benchmarking how coffee quality was for the world, by visiting producing regions, by talking to clients and buyers, by learning how to taste so that we would have this elite and be able to speak their language, by participating in barista and quality championships so that we would really understand how things worked, and then adapting to implement the system here. Everything was customized for a region that was quite different from the others, which has the low altitude paradigm (650 to 700 meters). But we are a farm that already has two Cup of Excellence titles (2010 and 2015) with this very modest altitude and application of the techniques I described.

What are the main challenges that Brazilian coffee growing still needs to overcome?

Brazilian coffee farming is a success story: it grows, pays, and distributes income. The entire network of collaborators and suppliers is well remunerated if we compare it to our competitors worldwide. Furthermore, the social and environmental levels and requirements that Brazilian coffee farming follows are references for any other place in the world. However, all of this is communicated very poorly, and we still have difficulty positioning Brazil. We have difficulty communicating how coffee is produced here, how our way of production preserves nature and respects people, and difficulty changing perceptions about the quality of our product. This communication is a great challenge that we need to overcome.