This is the story of Yuki Minami, who returned to her parent's farm to take up specialty. Long a specialty supplier in the
region, Fazenda Santo Antonio has since invested in the field, in raised beds and in training as part of Yuki's so-far
successful experiment of increasing quality to get better prices. Around the time Yuki returned take up coffee they
purchased a second farm, Olhos D'Aqua, which is right down the road. In 2016 Yuki banded together with other farmers in
her community - a group of third generation Brazilians of Japanese descent - to form Aequitas Coffee - with their first
export being to Crop to Cup in 2018.
If it were not for Yuki we would not be able to work in Brazil like we do. She has the fire, her heart is in it for the right
reasons, and she’s sharp as can be. Her coffee is almost as impressive, maybe more so because it has so much potential.
We are excited to support Yuki Minami and her neighbors, Edson Tamekuni and Michael Tomizawa, as they launch
Aequitas – a company that’s set out to do coffee differently. In her words, “Aequitas is the Roman goddess of equity. But
she was also a goddess that meant justice, transparency and fairness. And this is what I wanted to do, I wanted to
promote a fair trade for producers.”
Ahead of the 2023 harvest, Minami Agricola received a coffee post harvest consulting from the coffee post harvest PhD
Giselle Abreu and as a result changed some techniques like the thickness of the coffee layer during drying, experimented
with different processing like not washing cherry, fermenting in 4000 liters trunks, fermenting in lines of thick layers that
looked like a pyramid and fermentation with yeasts that were multiplied at the farm.