Barista & Farmer Brazil: The Reality Show/Educational Experience/Competition is Back!
Barista & Farmer Brazil follows a successful inaugural run in Puerto Rico in 2013 and a second round in Honduras in 2015. This year the reality show/educational experience/competition/amazing trip to a coffee producing country starts this week!
Founded by multi-time Italian barista champion Francesco Sanapo and Puerto Rican coffee farmer Rebecca Atienza, Barista & Farmer has brought baristas to origin for three years to live the life of a coffee farmer firsthand while also taking classes about all the steps in coffee production from the on-site Barista Academy and participating in a number of contests and challenges throughout the event’s two-week run.
Oh, and the whole thing is filmed. You can watch daily mini-films at the Barista & Farmer website. And after the Barista & Farmer Brazil event wraps, they’ll produce a documentary about the experience.
Over 200 baristas from around the world applied for this year’s event at host O’Coffee the biggest coffee producer of Brazil, located in Pedregulho, in the Alta Mogiana region and at Lambari, in the State of Minas Gerais.
Ten baristas were selected to attend via voting on social media.
They are: Guido Garavello (Italy); Miguel Angel Vera Fernandez (Venezuela); Jesslyn Evani (Indonesia); Nikolaos Kanakaris (Greece); Olga Kaplina (Russia); Amy Nake Manukyan (Armenia); Evgeni Pinchukov (Belarus); Daniel Rivera (USA), Agniesza Rojewska (Poland); and Rosey Hill (Australia).
What can they expect in Brazil? Let’s go to the Barista & Farmer press release:
The 10 baristas will wake up at drawn to spend the morning inside the plantation and face technical challenges such as a picking competition, weighing, use of the depulping machine, a hands-on test involving what is normally an automated process, which underscores the hard work a farmer has to do and sheds light on each step of the production chain. And again, the roasting test, right up to the Coffee Nursery, the creation of a personal œmini finca with the selection of the right plant, from seed to planting, crop diversification and naming.
Barista & Farmer is a project of education and competition, unique and innovative. The educational program, which has been implemented this year and is directed by Alberto Polojac, is based on the different subjects which compose the complex coffee’s production chain and includes several Scae modules. Each day will be distinguished by theoretical lessons on specific subjects like botanics, agronomy and applied chemistry on the field of coffee. Moreover, classes on the coffee production methods, roasting, green & coffee sensory which will be supported by specific lessons about espresso and other coffee extraction methods, tasting sessions, field demonstrations with practical tests aimed at improving the competitor’s skills.
œBarista & Farmer,” explains Patrizia Cecchi, business director of Rimini Fiera one of the project’s main sponsors, “had only two editions so far, but it already established itself as a successful and innovative talent show. Now, with the 2016 edition which will take place in the quintessential land of coffee, which is Brazil, we believe that specialty and quality coffee may receive an additional boost from which the entire production chain will benefit, from the education of professionists in the countries of origin to the promotion of the excellence of companies which produce innovative technologies as well as the glorification of new formats of cafeterias which support conscious consumption models. Sigep, the leading event in the field, is at the service of companies precisely to stimulate new and growing business opportunities.
œWe are going in the most important country in the world,” says Francesco Sanapo, “for coffee production. We will succeed in combining high technology with agriculture and that will translate into a high-level educational experience for the participants. The baristas have been chosen specifically with different personal profiles because we want to develop, even more than in the previuous editions of the show, this intercultural exchange in order to let emerge how the coffee is perceived in the different areas of the world. Moreover, this year the format is even more focused on the education, with “ possibily “ the most qualified teachers that we ever had.
Barista & Farmer Brazil runs from May 3 through May 13.
