Lucas Venturim

Expertise: Coffee production, Q-processor, Q-processing Robusta instructor, coffee education, coffee roasting, coffee sustainability, coffee processing, coffee consulting

Coffee insight: Let your coffee cool down a bit before you drink it—you’ll be able to better perceive the flavors.

Coffee fun fact: Until recently, coffee in Lucas’s region of Brazil was exclusively handpicked due to the unique terrain; today, roughly 90% of the harvest is still done by hand.

Lucas, a fifth-generation coffee producer, says his earliest memories are of playing around the coffee trees of his family’s coffee farm in the Espirito Santo region of Brazil. While he pursued his degree in civil engineering, and worked in the construction industry after he graduated, he was still involved with the farm and always thinking about ways he could improve their processes.

He quickly found parallels between the analytical mindset required for engineering and the practical problem-solving needed to be successful in coffee production. Civil engineers, he explains, “have this background of research, so we’re always trying different things, testing different things, and the way they can help. Also on the farm, we try different things and different processing methods and also different ways of growing, planting.”

While Lucas has always been involved with his family’s farm; he dove into coffee production full time in 2016. Today, he serves as commercial director for his family’s business—Café Fazenda Venturim—an award-winning producer of fine Robusta coffees. In addition to their 80-hectare coffee farm, which Lucas runs with his father and two brothers, the business includes coffee processing and coffee roasting.

Lucas is also a certified Q-processor, a Q-processor Robusta instructor, and a Robusta professional instructor for the Coffee Quality Institute, and he serves as a cupper and a coffee consultant.

Lucas is on a mission to change the narrative around Robusta coffee. The product of the incredibly versatile and adaptable Coffea canefora plant (often referred to as conilon in Brazil), Robusta coffees were long dismissed in many parts of the world—believed to be lower quality and bitter tasting compared to Arabica coffee. Lucas believes that educating roasters, baristas, and consumers about Robusta’s unique flavors can shift the industry’s perspective. Rather than trying to conform to and imitate the flavors of Arabica coffees, he’s working to establish a distinct value for Robusta.

In order to hone their high-quality green Robusta, Lucas and his family have experimented with various harvesting and processing methods. The discovered, for example, that harvesting only very ripe coffee cherries, drying slowly, and processing using fermentation all helped unlock Robusta’s natural flavors.

Recognizing that knowledge gaps often prevented coffee professionals—including roasters and baristas—from experimenting with Robustas in creating whole bean coffee, Lucas’s family started their own roastery to help showcase the possibilities of Robusta. “Maybe people don’t know how to roast this coffee, and they are not roasting properly, and that’s why they don’t like it,” he explains. “So we [did] a lot of courses on roasting and research and started to send samples.” They also experimented with brewing methods and techniques that could ensure Robusta’s flavors had a chance to shine.

Coffee lovers often associate sustainability with environmental factors and agricultural practices. Lucas says that while preserving natural resources is crucial for ensuring the future of coffee production, economic sustainability is just as important—though often overlooked. Fair prices ensure that future generations will see coffee farming as a viable, desirable livelihood.

Lucas explains, “There is nothing sustainable if you cannot pay for [it.] … [My children] will never grow coffee themselves if I get home every day complaining about how difficult it is to grow coffee and to live [on the income] from coffee. For sure they won’t [want to] do this. They will try to study to become doctors and lawyers… So I think the challenge is to do it properly, to give them a good life, education, and dignity. That way they can get interested in staying in coffee…”

For years, Lucas’s family farm produced high-quality Robusta coffee, but the stigma surrounding the bean hindered its popularity and market value. Lucas successfully advocated for Coffea canephora growers to join the Specialty Coffee Association (SCA).

His goal was not just for his family’s farm to receive recognition for their fine Robusta, but for all canefora growers to have access to the opportunities available in the specialty market, which has the potential to create greater sustainability in the coffee industry as a whole.

He says, “Our state has 40,000 families growing canephora, growing conilon, for example.  All these people were excluded from the specialty coffee scene and opportunities. …All these people probably [wouldn’t] have enough income to continue growing for the next generation because growing commodity coffee in a small scale is not worth it. Today we have this possibility, if they put [in] some energy and some effort, they can also reach this differentiation market, improve their incomes, and maybe the next generation of their families will continue growing coffee. I think that this is the moment.”

Café Fazenda Venturim website: https://fazendaventurim.com.br/

Café Fazenda Venturim Instagram: @cafefazendaventurim

Lucas’s Instagram: @lucas_venturim_fv

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-venturim-722070143/

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