Barista and Farmer contest kicks off in Brazil

The third edition of Barista & Farmer, the talent show dedicated to the world of specialty coffee, started yesterday. The ten contestants began with a trip to the plantation of the O'Coffee company, located in Pedregulho, in the state of San Paolo. The company is ranked among the top five farms in Brazil thanks to an annual production that ranges between 30,000 – 36,000 coffee bags per year. Such a prolific output is achieved with the implementation of the most modern picking techniques, including the use of a picking machine that is almost four meters tall that represents a real evolution in the picker's work, who now have specialized skills to work with this innovative machinery. The machine does not substitute the work of the pickers but instead it joins them on the picking process in the time frame when the coffee cherries are ripe along the neverending lines of the O'Coffee company.  “The importance of Brazil in the coffee culture is huge, it's the biggest producer and seller of coffee in the world,” says Francesco Sanapo, three time Italian barista champion and creator of the talent show, in cooperation with Sigep and Rimini Fiera. “This land, after Puerto Rico and Honduras, recounts a different story, that of a technologically advanced country with a unique biodiversity. The goal is to let the baristas know the different and specific techniques in order to give them a broader knowledge on the subject. Among the many producers in Brazil, we started a collaboration with O'Coffee Farm because it offers a wide array of different coffee types, including an entire area dedicated to specialty coffee.”