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Modern agriculture and modernist architecture work together on Fazenda Rio Verde, where they’ve been growing coffee for more than a century in the hills of Brazil’s Minas Gerais State. The state-of-the-art processing facility, built in 2015, adds efficiency to a process only slightly changed since coffee was first domesticated in Ethiopia in 575 CE, and brought to Brazil by the Portuguese in 1727. The coffee fruits, called cherries, are harvested by hand or machine, washed, and then spread on hard drying yards until they are ready for the mechanical dryers. Then the beans are hulled and mechanically sorted by size and color. Most of Fazenda Rio Verde’s crop (twenty-four thousand 132-pound bags per year) is considered “specialty” grades that are exported raw direct from the farm. Over the years, Starbucks has been a major customer.

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Modern agriculture and modernist architecture work together on Fazenda Rio Verde, where they’ve been growing coffee for more than a century in the hills of Brazil’s Minas Gerais State. The state-of-the-art processing facility, built in 2015, adds efficiency to a process only slightly changed since coffee was first domesticated in Ethiopia in 575 CE, and brought to Brazil by the Portuguese in 1727. The coffee fruits, called cherries, are harvested by hand or machine, washed, and then spread on hard drying yards until they are ready for the mechanical dryers. Then the beans are hulled and mechanically sorted by size and color. Most of Fazenda Rio Verde’s crop (twenty-four thousand 132-pound bags per year) is considered “specialty” grades that are exported raw direct from the farm. Over the years, Starbucks has been a major customer.

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