Paraná | Brazil

Eloir is part of the Mataõ Women In Coffee project. Mataõ is a remote region in southern Brazil and the group formed to support these women’s efforts to run a portion of their family farm with a focus on quality instead of quantity. The group’s coffees have won competition accolades but the best part might be that they have made their husbands jealous with the premium pricing and recognition they have received.

Here is Eloir’s story in her own words:

Quick Facts

Producer:
Eloir Inocencia Nogueira de Souza

Region:
Tomazina, Norte Pioneiro, Paraná

Varieties:
Yellow Catuai

Processing:
Natural. Hand-picked and dried on African beds

Cup Profile
Big fruit flavors - tropical fruit, cherry. Juicy acidity and big creamy body.

My first contact with coffee was in my childhood, my father, João Nogueira, was a civil servant of the municipality of Tomazina-PR, but every year during his vacation he, along with my mother, Maria, went to harvest coffee in the farms of the region to get extra money. I was 12 years old when I started helping them, at first my three brothers and I were playing among the coffee trees, but as I was the oldest I gradually helped with the harvest.

I was always connected to coffee, but only when I got married in 2003, when I started working in my own farm, there were only 3 ago, the money we were getting was enough just to stay, we were not aware of the specialty coffees, until that in 2007 my father-in-law, Mr. Edezio Souza, was the champion of a quality regional competition, this sparked our interest and made us dream of producing such coffees, but this dream only started to materialize through Capricornio's partnership with the group. Matão women, which I have been part of since the foundation in 2013, because it was from this partnership that I began to learn more about the procedures to be able to produce and market a special coffee.

In the meantime my husband and I, Claudeir de Souza, had our two children, Gabriel 13 years old and Rafael 7 years old, both love being in the middle of the coffee, the oldest likes to help with the drying tasks in the hanging yard, monitoring the temperature of the greenhouse and stirring the coffee.

Today we have already doubled our production area and we already have 6 ha, in which we expect to harvest 100 bags of specialty coffees out of a total of 300 bags. The partnership was very important as it opened the doors of the world to our coffees.