Brazil's premium coffee exports have taken a severe hit after US President Donald Trump imposed a 50 per cent tariff on Brazilian goods in early August, but one unusual brew has escaped the downturn: coffee made from beans that have passed through the digestive tract of the Jacu bird.
The tariff, triggered by a dispute with Brazil's leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has caused a nearly 70 per cent drop in August exports of Brazilian specialty coffee to the US compared with July, according to the Brazilian Specialty Coffee Association. However, Jacu Bird coffee, which sells for up to £960 per kilo, has seen no impact on sales because its main markets are in Japan, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Europe, not America.
“Americans ... don't have the same vision as the Japanese, the Asians, people from Saudi Arabia, the Europeans, of looking for this type of quality,” said Henrique Sloper, producer of Jacu Bird coffee and chief executive of Fazenda Camocim, the farm behind the product. “So, for us, it doesn't affect anything in the specific case of this product.”
The coffee is prized for its floral aroma and balanced acidity, qualities that come from the bird's digestive process. “The Jacu doesn't just eat coffee, it eats fruit too, and inside its craw, the coffee bean absorbs the characteristics of these fruits into the bean as well,” explained Rogerio Lemke, agriculture supervisor at Fazenda Camocim.
While the Jacu bird coffee has dodged the tariffs, the farm's other coffees, which make up most of its annual production, have been hit hard. “America is the largest coffee market on the planet (and) we're not entering America,” Sloper said. “In the short term, it's very bad, but in the medium and long term it might force us to open other markets.”
