Our Family

Nossa Familia means “Our Family” in Portuguese. For six generations, our family has offered internationally celebrated coffee from our farm in Brazil.

In 1890, nestled beside an ancient Brazilian volcano, our great-great-grandparents planted the family’s first coffee crop. They developed methods of cultivation in response to their environment. Without electricity or automobiles, everything was done by hand, with much care. Over a century later, these same methods are both heritage and day-to-day realities.

Six generations later, this tradition is a point of great pride for us, and it’s one we carry forward each day. It’s why we say our coffee isn’t just fairly traded, it’s Family Traded.

In our industry, there is much talk about fairly traded coffee, and for good reason. It’s great to see so many coffee companies pursuing sustainable and ethical initiatives, even choosing to compete about who’s the fairest of them all. Sustainable and ethical practices aren’t shrewd marketing at Nossa Familia, they’re family tradition.

Because it’s important to our customers, we offer coffee certified by Utz Kapeh. Much larger than this distinction, however, is our family’s tradition, and our ties to the farm and the families who help us grow and harvest the coffee. This enables us to do much more than simply pay a fair price for coffee, we’re able to directly affect individuals, families and communities, not only through our business practices, but also through our regular donations to local nonprofits and charitable organizations.

Ours is a large family, with many bonds to the larger community. This is how we were raised. Coffee requires a lot of hard work, many folks working together. We import directly from our farm, roast in Portland, and give back to the community we call home.

The family farm isn’t just a working business—it’s a self-sustaining “agro-village” that’s home to 47 resident families. About 60 people live at the farm: husbands, wives and children who lend and cultivate a strong sense of community. Housing is provided for farm workers and their families free of charge. These white homes with blue trim dot the landscape, and the village has a school, church, social club for gatherings and dances, health clinic and a soccer field.

Eleven months per year, the farm is completely removed from the power grid. Back in the 1950's, our family installed a small turbine and generator to produce power from the waterfall. The same generator is still in use today, powering the homes and processing equipment. In addition to the generator, we also use the dried coffee husks to power the processing equipment.

Lindolpho de Carvalho Dias, fifth-generation coffee farmer and proprietor, developed and oversees a program of planting native species to keep a better ecological balance. Wastewater is also treated to avoid polluting the stream running through the farm.

Nossa Familia’s cofounders, Augusto Carvalho Dias and Jason Lesh met while students at the University of Portland. United by a passion for amazing coffee and social responsibility, both saw an opportunity to author a new chapter in this larger tradition. In 2006, they launched Portland, Oregon-based Nossa Familia Coffee. Where better to begin this new endeavor than Portland, where great coffee and social responsibility are local imperatives as well as points of community pride.

From our family farm to your cup, go beyond Fair Trade with Portland’s Family Traded coffee. Nossa Familia coffee.