Will her daughter follow her footsteps one day? Ana Cristina becomes thoughtful. We are high up on their coffee farm in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The coffee plants are lined up in the sun, a gentle hilly landscape around us. There, she says, is her husband's country, also a coffee farmer. After the marriage, they had teamed up their and his cultivated areas.

Ana waits until the daughter is a little further away. Then the small farmer speaks of the hope that the ten-year-old will also become a coffee farmer one day. Unfortunately, this is uncertain. “The weather has become strange, the climate crisis is full,” she says. “Sometimes it rains too much, then again not at all. Then it is extremely hot at the wrong time. This is what makes us trouble."

Packing against the effects of the climate crisis.

But lamenting is not her job – the farmer grabs with her husband. With the support of her cooperative and Fairtrade, it is implementing numerous measures to arm the coffee harvest against weather extremes. These include shade trees that grow in the middle of the plantation: high castor stalks protect the sensitive coffee plants from the heat and are later processed into fertilizer.

Where the cold wind damage the leaves of the coffee, Ana Cristina and her husband have planted for the protection of corn. Up on the hill, they also spent a huge rectangular hole in the ground – a retention basin for rainwater. The water collected there slowly seeps into the ground. This helps when a drought begins again.

Women's coffee and organic production.

“The measures we have already implemented are already having an impact,” says Ana. She is involved in the Coopfam cooperative, is converting large parts of the production straight to organic and is one of the founders of the “Café Feminino” – a women's coffee. This means that at least 50 percent of the work and the value added is provided by women. The money generated with it remains in women's hands.

The last few years have been difficult, says Ana Cristina. After more than 20 years, the frost has repeatedly struck, damaged plants, destroyed harvests. Some farmers who have cultivated lower and thus more vulnerable areas have already resaturated – on raspberries, mulberries or maize. The coffee production has become impossible due to the volatile weather.

Ana Cristina looks at the green around her. The hope that the next generation will also live well from coffee has not lost it. But she knows that hope is not enough. She tackles it.