Curu’s Nature Mission

To all nature-loving Curu Coffee drinkers.

Thanks to you we converted another 5.5 hectares of coffee monoculture into biodiverse agroforests in 2025. That’s on top of the 14 hectares in the years 2023 and 2024. Together we create forest farms from nature harming monocultures.

2025 was a difficult year for Curu. The reference price for coffee sales, set by the commodity market, doubled in 2025 compared to 2024. The higher reference price increased Curu’s costs, causing us to lose an important partner, our main client, who was unable to support our higher prices within their business model. Losing our cornerstone client means we import less coffee and so lose economies of scale. Lauro charges the same amount to drive his truck from Simonésia to Pedra Azul, whether he loaded 20 or 50 coffee sacks. So transporting less coffee beans increases the transport costs per bean. This is the same all the way across the journey our beans take from the Atlantic Forest to Berlin.

Until Curu operates profitably, we rely on the financial support of the four families who have made Curu possible. As the year 2025 came to an end, those families had a choice: to give up; or keep going. We decided to keep going. But we’ve had to increase our prices to reflect our unique, nature-growing supply chain. We know that’s a big ask to Curu drinkers.

At Curu, we believe that drinking coffee that helps farmers help nature is the only way to drink coffee. We hope you’ll stay on our journey with us.

As you can see in our web-shop, we’ve sold all of our roasted coffee. Just now, we’re waiting for our next shipment from Brazil to land in Hamburg.

Please sign up for our newsletter (bottom-centre of our webpages) and we’ll keep you updated.

Thank you for your support and all the best,

Abigail

With every curu espresso you drink we transform 81cm2 of land

Our farmers produce over a ton of green coffee beans per hectare of land that they farm, which translates into around 863kg of roasted coffee per hectare. 1 espresso = 7G of roasted coffee.

THE MATHS

The proportion of a hectare of land needed to create an espresso can be calculated by dividing 7g (0.007kg) by 863kg. Multiply that proportion by the number of square centimeters in a hectare, which is one hundred thousand, and you get 811cm2 of land used to create an espresso.

But because it's not enough to plant a tree, the tree has to be looked after and grow too, we can't claim all the positive effects happen straight away, so we count the 10 years it takes an agroforest to mature. That means we divide the 811cm2 by 10. We won't sell more than 863kg of coffee per hectare of land farmed in partnership withso that your impact stays measurable.

In detail:
1 espresso = 7grams roasted coffee
7grams roasted coffee = 8.4 grams green coffee
At least 1040kg of green coffee is grown per hectare of land (often double this)
1040 kg is 1,040,000 grams
8.4 grams / 1,040,000 grams = the proportion of a hectare of land needed to grow an espresso = “P”
There are 100,000,000 square centimeters in a hectare = “H”
P x H = the area needed to grow an espresso
P x H = 811 sqcm
Divide by ten because it takes us this long to grow our agroforests
= 81 sqcm of earth changed per cup

If agroforestry is so great, why isn't all coffee grown like this ❓

👉🏼 Uncertainty

For farmers land is business, so the focus is usually to generate the biggest profit. Monocultures are usually the best strategy to maximise profit.

👉🏼 Complexity

Managing trees, shrubs, and crops together demands new skills and a deeper understanding of plant interactions, requiring more expertise to manage.

👉🏼 Less developed markets

In a landscape dominated by coffee monocultures, your coffee buyer will pick your coffee up from your farm door and transfer money to your account for it. For other products of your agroforest you need to find buyers and probably also deliver your products to them. More risk, more hassle.

👉🏼 Lack of support

There are various state and private support programmes for monocultures but for agroforestry there are none, at least in the area where we are working. Not just that, but there are even bureacratic hurdles, such as the requirement to register any native tree you plant with the state forestry commission (Instituto Estadual Florestal). You don’t have to do this if you’re planting non-native trees.

💡Our Impact

We focus on agroforestry with diverse native trees to grow nature positive coffee that supports coffee farmers in the face of climate change challenges.