Cerrado is the newest coffee region in Brazil. It was shaped by two important events. In 1975, the “black frost” devastated plantations in Parana — at the time, the largest coffee-producing region in Brazil — while in western São Paulo, coffee plantations were struggling against an intense nematodes infestation. These two events brought Brazil’s coffee industry to its knees.
Farmers set out in search of new areas to develop and arrived in Cerrado — an underdeveloped area with poor, acidic soil — just
as a government effort was underway to understand the science of Cerrado’s soil and whether it might someday be a major food producer. Simple, inexpensive solutions wound up being effective, and coffee plants adapted well to Cerrado’s well-defined climate. Its warm temperatures, intense sunlight and dry winters aligned perfectly with the harvest, which demands dry weather. Today, coffee is grown here in 55 towns and across 210,000 hectares. Cerrado is also one of the most biodiverse and complex regions on earth. The area is home to roughly 5% of all species on earth.
