He came to put an end to the company, in the technical language that means liquidating. Alessandro Miranda smiles as he thinks back to it. We are in Nova Resende, a mountainous region in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, and Alessandro is president here of the Fairtrade-certified Coopervitae cooperative, which he should have closed in 2017. Actually.

“The situation wasn’t good at the time,” he remembers. Coopervitae had hundreds of members, but most of them sold their coffee through the cooperative. The Fairtrade idea did not make real progress. But to close the cooperative, which was founded in the seventies, Alessandro did not want that in the end. He saw the potential – and launched anew. With 70 coffee farmers who were fully behind the cooperative. More than 500 members moved or were cancelled.

Better sustainable than growing too fast

Today Coopervitae stands well. The number of members has reached almost 200 again, “so long as we have no hurry to grow,” says Alessandro. “We have a long waiting list, but we prefer to include the right people in the community who fully support the Fairtrade thought.”

For him, Fairtrade means above all: stable minimum prices that enable long-term planning – Fairtrade has recently raised it strongly in August. And the Fairtrade premium, through which some activities are financed – from training courses to the bio-transformation and climate adaptation measures to the most important project of the cooperative: two solar parks that provide clean and free energy to all members.

Clean energy for all members

To get to the solar systems, you have to drive to a hill via a dusty, winding piste. There, the solar panels are lined up and eerily absorb the Brazilian sun. Around 25,000 kilowatts are generated in the two solar parks every month, the project runs for over 25 years. “The number of CO2 emissions are avoided as if we were planting 23,000 trees,” says Alessandro. Each farmer's household receives a amount of electricity that covers the basic needs of an average small farming family – that is exactly what Coopervitae has calculated in advance.

“There is still a lot to be done, the climate crisis challenges and out,” says Alessandro. He has found his destiny: to help the people in the region work with the changed climate, to increase and secure their yields – with the support of Fairtrade.