A ground-breaking 5-year research initiative in Brazil between Assembly Coffee, Volcano Coffee Works and Mió.
Sombra - 'shade' in Portugese - is being delivered by Assembly in collaboration with our sister brand Volcano Coffee Works, our green coffee partner - Mió, and the Federal Institute of Espírito Santo.
It aims to showcase how Brazil's ubiquitous monocrop, full-sun farming system - proven to decimate wildlife, degrade soil diversity and provide coffee plants with no protection from extreme weather events - can be reconfigured to harness the power of agroforestry.
Sombra will prove that agroforestry land management systems can help to mitigate the threat to the coffee industry of a rapidly warming climate, improve production yields for producers, enable native wildlife to prosper alongside large-scale farming activities, and pave the way for a more sustainable future for Brazil’s coffee industry.
Over five years, we're funding the reforesting of 60,000 coffee trees and non-coffee trees across a 15-hectare plot of Mió's land. In doing so, we'll create a sustainable and integrated management system of different plant species to protect the area from extreme weather conditions, recover soil health and native species diversity, and improve yield from the area at harvest.