Today, nearly 80% of our volume and our coffees come from biodynamic agriculture and more than 10% from organic agriculture! If, in addition, you take into account the fact that more than 80% of our coffees come from the short circuit, that is to say bought directly from the producers, then you have understood the depth of the commitment of L'Arbre à Café, and the seriousness of this New French Art of Coffee.
Caption, from left to right: excerpt from Claudio Corallo's coffee plantation in Sao Tome, Hippolyte Courty in conversation with Ricardo Pérez on the plantation in Santa Lucia, Costa Rica, portrait of Hippolyte Courty with Unna Thiagarajan, producer of Kent coffees in India.
There are many different types of organic farming and they are often complementary. Thus, to obtain the Demeter certification - certification of biodynamic agriculture - the farmer must first obtain the organic one, and both are issued by certified organizations, often the same for both certifications. Some of our producers have several certifications or, more precisely, they combine several types of agriculture, such as Ricardo Perez from the Helsar Santa Lucia farm in Costa Rica, who is in permaculture and organic, and Claudio Corallo, who is in natural agriculture inspired by the work of the Japanese scientist Fukuoka(The Revolution of a Straw), i.e., in a low-interventionist form of agriculture, It is also the case of Unna, in India, who makes the meeting between biodynamic agriculture and Vedic agriculture, and finally of César and Hector at Chakra d'dago in Peru, who lead their farm in biodynamic agriculture and realize a great work on compost and animal manure. Their farm is a real barnyard, or paradise for animals from carp to guinea pigs and boas!
L'Arbre à Café pushes these producers to be certified in order to make their approach known, to officially distinguish themselves from other practices, and to guarantee administratively to consumers the integrity of their agriculture. Most of them do it and are certified, we publish their certifications, others give up for obvious reasons of cost but also complexity. Indeed, depending on the market to which they export, they must obtain different certifications, all of which cost money. As a result, what they gain by the organic (valued on the market), is lost by the multiplication of certifications.
L'Arbre à Café is not certified, that's why the organic and Demeter labels do not appear on the packages. The main reason is that we work with mono-varietal coffees and directly from the producers, we keep the whole raw material. Our only action is to roast the coffee, that is to say to cook it, naked, like any roaster, and thus without any other material in order to guarantee the maximum integrity of our coffees. We import them according to organic standards and store them under the same conditions.
