Meet our producers

Rafael Marques has been working for FAF since 2017. He is responsible for sourcing in the Espírito Santo region. The region has long had a bad reputation when it comes to speciality coffee, but thanks to the work he does every day alongside producers with the Lado a Lado project, things are changing, and so is the quality of the coffee. We interviewed him to find out more about his work.

In 2016, I heard from a friend that Don Herbert Betancourt was growing exotic varieties of cacao in Nahulingo, El Salvador. I contacted him to find out more about his cacao. That year, he told me that it wasn't the right time, that he wasn't ready yet. Dr Herbert Betancourt is a force to be reckoned with in El Salvador, both for his medical training and for his remarkable political career. Today, he is one of the producers we are most happy to visit. The cacao from the Chiquihuat farm is delicious and has many advantages. It can be used as ceremonial cacao and, of course, as the raw material for the world's finest chocolate bars.

Finca Chiquihuat has a conscience. In this interview, I have tried to summarise some of the questions and discussions we had with Don Herbert.

Ernest Nshimyimana is Managing Director of the Dukundekawa cooperative, or “Let's love coffee”, in English. Founded in 2003, the cooperative is located 50 km from Kigali, the country's capital, in northern Rwanda. An exemplary cooperative to discover in Ernest's company!

PS: We have left the questions written in Amharic for our Ethiopian friends, for the others it's for pleasure.

PS: We have left the questions written in Amharic for our Ethiopian friends, for the others it's for pleasure.

Ernest was at Belco two weeks ago, an opportunity for us to ask him a few questions about the current harvest in Rwanda, its production, its production costs and the projects that the cooperative carries out behind coffee production...