Illycaffè Chairman Andrea Illy on the Vast Potential of “Virtuous Agriculture”

He just had that sabbatical.

Exactly. took time off to really dig into that. And he really understands the chain, where all these beans are coming from, how to maintain the quality of the product at the scale at which they operate, which is really impressive. I mean, they could be a public company, but it's still a family-run business, and he plans to keep it that way.

Yeah, amazing. All right, well, I'm excited. This is Spencer with Andrea Illy.

Andrea, welcome to Time Sensitive.

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

It's great to have you here. I'm a big fan of Illy Cafe and love coffee.

And I'm a fan of Time Sensitive.

Great. Well, I wanted to Begin the conversation thinking about beauty. I know that beauty is something that matters deeply to you, not just when talking about coffee beans, but also talking about art, life beyond. What is your sort of personal definition of beauty? How do you view and think about beauty?

Well, beauty is about perfection in a sense. In 2 ways, because we are used, anthropologically speaking, to evaluate things, objects, people, whatever, if living or still, from the beauty angle. And we have the tendency to seek absence of defects, particularly in natural products. If you find an apple with the perfect color, With no taint whatsoever. This is the perfect apple, and you can even predict the taste of the apple according to the visual, the look. And the same is true for people. No, the same is true for animals. Think how when you when you look at a dog or a horse, and it's unbelievable how vanity. Is present in nature, both in living and also in vegetable. Because if one natural living being is beautiful, it has a kind of a consciousness about this beauty, which is enhancing its own beauty. And you not necessarily need to be kind of close to civilization in order, like dogs or horses, to have this vanity. It's kind of something which is like karma. Okay. And as far as still objects, you seek for basically harmony. And so the right proportions between shapes, which is typically summarized in the aural symmetry, which is a kind of a mathematical concept. So this is why, and beauty is so important because it's experiential. It triggers our emotions, but it's also a way of communicating because through beauty you express yourself and you get the immediate kind of engagement, empathy from the viewer.

Mm-hmm.

This is why beauty is so important for me.

I'm curious sort of about how you view beauty from a business perspective, given that you run one of the largest coffee companies in the world.

Well, beauty is fundamental for your positioning because if you want to sell the best, you have to be the most beautiful. So ancient Greeks have this word which is kaldo kagathos. Which is beauty and goodness fused in one word. And it has a kind of a double meaning. If it is beautiful, it must be good and vice versa. So it's signaling. The most effective way of signaling is through beauty. This is why whichever, let's say, luxury product seeks beauty, no matter if it is durable Or consumable, beauty is part of the experience and is a way to position yourself. So it's fundamental because this drives your intangible value, which is about pricing. Why do you go? You go to McDonald's and you feed yourself with less one dollar per day in terms of amount of calories, or you go to the super three-star Michelin star. and you pay up to $400, $500 for a meal, what's the difference? It's in the beauty of it. Beauty, which is a concept which can go beyond visual.

Right. It connects to the senses.

It connects to the senses. It actually, let's say in the etymological way, terms, beauty was meaning goodness, ethical goodness in a sense, until the end of 17th century. So it's only recently that beauty has been limited to visual. It's a broader concept.

And what do you think it is about contemporary society or the modern day that kind of led it to being so positioned in terms of the visual?

So I'm a little bit, let's say, disappointed that beauty is becoming exclusive. If you look at this wonderful Zaha Hadid building here across the street, which is amazing, right? How many Zaha Hadid you have and how many people can really appreciate it? And this is— and the rest of the world is more and more kind of unsophisticated. And this is something which requires a— Yeah. bigger educational efforts. And I have to be careful what I say, but let me say that I read something in the press. It's not my personal opinion, but it's something which I was surprised to read in the press, that in United States there is a less let's say, less interest for beauty also in the way you live your life, the way you dress, the way you experience literally your daily life compared to Europe, for instance.

Which has a long history of that.

Which has a long history. So is it something which is part of a kind of asphyxiation? I give you an example. Italy is considered to be the land of beauty since Millennia, okay? And we are simply blessed by God with this beauty of the land, with our hills, mountains, lakes, rivers, and the sea. And in the middle of this wonderful area, which is the Mediterranean, with all this vegetation, is incredible. And with this 3 millennia of history in Italy, the best mind came to Italy because of the beauty, and they settled down in order to be kind of inspired by its beauty. And over the time, this kind of continuous process built the gigantic cultural heritage through the arts, through architecture, literature. And now we have a country which is like a museum. It's an open-air museum. If you roam around in Italy, you have this kind of feeling. As a consequence of that, Italians are As you say, assuefaction. You have this word in English? Assuefaction, you're dependent. You are used to. Like when you smoke, you're used to smoke and you need smoke, but you cannot stop smoking. It's a habit. It's just a habit. So it's normal in your life, but you cannot get rid of it. You kind of commoditize. But it would be important to to go back to the deep cultural, let's say, meaning of beauty, which in a sense is kind of even spiritual. I know it's a kind of unknown and very ill-defined territory, but why is beauty so inspirational? Why can you have such a profound, let's say, emotion like the Stendhal syndrome in front of a magnificent piece of art or have a vibration in your stomach because you listen to nice music. Why? We don't know.

Connected to this though is the idea of neuroaesthetics, which you've mentioned in a book you wrote referencing, of course, research by the neuroscientist Samir Zeki. How did you get interested in neuroaesthetics? Where did that come from?

Well, I'm a scientist by background, so I'm interested in anything. Also because I want to find an explanation to everything I experience in my life. I don't give anything for granted. Hmm. So Semir Zeki helped me to explain the neurophysiology of beauty, which is quite interesting because in your brain, you constantly— this is why being used to beauty is a kind of a self-enriching process. Because in our brain, we continue to receive inputs and then we compare with our mental idea of beauty that we created in our mind by seeing more and more things and kind of self-educating ourselves. And so the higher the, let's say, sophistication of your mental beauty concept, the more you are seeking to, let's say, perfection. And this eventually creates an internal tension to creative people. I don't say that everybody is creative in a way that you need to reproduce beauty, but creative people, then they try to reproduce the mental idea of beauty that they have. And this is a continuous process which continues to power to nurture the creative process. And the good news is that I like to joke that beauty might be the perpetual movement.

Yeah.

If you consume resources, commodities like oil, let's say for energy, you burn it and then it's not there any longer. And on the opposite, you have damage due to the greenhouse gas that you emit by burning oil. So you not only consume, but you pollute. Beauty is the opposite. You never consume beauty. And this can be testified by the fact that beauty is always, let's say, your legacy. The best and the most beautiful and precious things in life are the ones which are, let's say, stay over the centuries. Hmm. No matter if it is arts, architecture, Or even clothing, whatever it is, if it is beautiful, it's precious, it's conserved.

Yeah.

And so we conserve only the best part and the most beautiful from our history since millennials. And this capitalizes itself, it's sediments, like sediments, and it continues to inspire the beauty, no matter if you are inspired by ancient times beauty, modern, or contemporary. You continue to inspire your creativity with the beauty that you inherited from the past.

Where do you see this connection to time? Because what you're really talking about is things that are sort of time-honored or honoring time. So where do you see beauty kind of in connection to time?

Yeah, beauty is eternal. I can tell you, A personal story. The Illy logo is a painting by James Rosenquist. James Rosenquist was one of the monsters of pop art. And we had the typical habit to redesign, refresh our logo every 10 years in order to maintain it contemporary. So one day we were really disappointed because by starting working with contemporary arts for Illy Art Collections, which now became the largest art item collection in the world.

We'll get to that in a second.

We completely changed the brand personality. So, and there was a clash between this beautiful art and our logo. How can you How can you have this disconnection? So we said, we need to do something with our logo. And we started trying with all this graphics design, with architecture design. And eventually decision was, let's go to an artist. As simple as that. When we saw this logo by the painting by James Rosenquist, immediate understanding, this is eternal. It will never change anymore. Forever.

What about it to you is eternal? How does something become eternal?

It becomes eternal when, well, it is a sign of times. Beauty is marking, literally, Think about the different cultural and architectural and artistic styles, how they did literally benchmark, let's say, like milestone, different period of our history.

Hmm.

So, but there are some beauties which are eternal in a sense that they are adapted, let's say, to any To any time,

they're just right.

They are just right. They are just right. Yes, there are few things in. It's it's a very profound question you ask me. But you know, if if you go in in to a wonderful cathedral, think about the the cathedral which is still under construction, and they have the challenge to finish it. Sagrada Familia. Sagrada Sagrada Familia. What do you think about it will be perfect forever, even though maybe the, uh, life, let's say the architectural style becomes more contemporary? Uh, this is a piece of perfection which will be, let's say, actual forever, even though not contemporary.

I think that's why the world had such a strong reaction to Notre Dame burning.

Absolutely. Yes, because you also have to consider the magnitude of these objects and its symbolism. If you have really the masterpiece in terms of beauty, then it becomes a symbol. And if it is a symbol, it will be a symbol forever.

Mm-hmm. I want to bring up, uh, Gilo Dorfles in, in the—

Oh yes.

Context of this conversation. He was the late art critic who was also, like you, from Trieste.

And a good friend.

And a good friend. He, he believed that contemporary art had kind of completely lost its connection with nature. At the same time, he didn't totally believe in this idea of beauty. I guess in the context of the conversation we're having, What sort of importance were the ideas that you would— the conversations you would have with Dorfleis?

So, Gillo was the inventor of the word kitsch. Kitsch is about an expression of just show-off, losing completely the essence of nature, I would say, which is elegance. So unelegance is kitsch just for the sake of show-off. And this I totally agree with him. And this kind of pollution did contaminate contemporary art as well for the specific sake, not all contemporary art, of course, Not all, but for the specific sake of impressing. I want to impress. I want to shock people by seeing an image and I make it maybe sometimes ugly on purpose because I want to impress. So this is manipulation and we both don't like it. This is why, even though I know it's perfectly obsolete and completely disconnected from— I ask my team in the contemporary art to seek beauty because beauty is also about talent. So everybody can express ugliness and try to do something impressive. I can go walking naked in the street and then I did it. Okay. And I will have a Probably a front page in the New York Times. So what's the point? Try to do the Gioconda and then we talk, okay? How much you really need in terms of talent and culture and exercise in order to really do the Gioconda, for instance. So, you know, Gilo was a very angry person. He was really always angry. And he was a kind— I interpret his anger like of being angry with the society becoming more and more decadent from this point of view. And it's a paradox, but it's mathematically completely logic that the more knowledge we can access, the less, let's say, cultivated we are, cultured. So it's something that we need to solve one day. Because nowadays the trend is to be very superficial in terms of culture by surfing the social media and not, let's say, literally studying things, but just surfing. And we are still there, but I hope that things will change soon because we know that we are reaching a kind of saturation with our world, where this paradigm is not forever. And the younger generation is much more intense in the search of authenticity, in the search of also this kind of manipulated word sustainability. So I think things are going to change, but it will need time. And Jillo will not be there unfortunately because he passed away. last year to, to, to testimony this change.

What connection do you see between beauty and coffee?

Well, as I wrote in my book, The Dream of Coffee, coffee is inspiring beauty due to the places where it comes from. The beauty of the land where coffee is grown is amazing. I, I wish everybody could go and visit these places which are so peaceful and so beautiful from there. So you really feel this harmony because it's so natural. And so this is one source of beauty. And this word exotism is very rich in terms of kind of inspiration, right? And these are exotic countries because coffee comes from exotic destinations. This is one. Then coffee is typically consumed in very beautiful places. One of the places which made coffee famous and successful to people are cafes. Mm-hmm. And cafes used to be literally luxurious. You go to the cafe, And everything was glossy, golden, mirrors, marble, beautiful material, elegance. And you were specifically going to cafes to be shown to be in the cafe and to see who was in the cafe. This was really the way to live the coffee culture at the beginning of the, let's say, in the 17th century and 18th century in Europe. So it has been at the center of the society of the most important scientific revolution, Illuminism, and so on. And since then, coffee continued to be at the very center of cultural life and social life to such an extent that it's still the beverage of success in our lives. It's the beverage of social and professional success. If you want to socialize, let's go and have a coffee as a first thing you offer, right? And if you want to be inspired and performant in your professional life, then you drink a cup of coffee and, and, and, and, and this is it. So this is why it's so important and so linked to beauty.

And of course, with Illy, you have the Illy Art Collection, which started in 1992. You've been commissioning these limited edition Coffee cup designs from renowned designers, emerging artists, musicians, filmmakers, so many different people. And I'll name a few of them here because I think it's worth just mentioning that the range goes from Mark Quinn, one of the most recent collaborations, to Robert Wilson, to Alanis Morissette, Yoko Ono, Jeff Koons. How did that project kind of come about? I understand it was your father who started it, but it's really—

Oh, it was my brother Francesco, not my father. This project started from the implicitly because we didn't know the word at that time, calocagathos. We wanted to make beauty beyond goodness in order to elevate the coffee experience and to make it better, more communicable, you see. So this was the intuition. My brother Francesco is a creative. He's an artist as a spirit. He has been musician, photographer, and sculptor. Whatever he does is made with an artistic twist, and so he brought this idea, and and it has been an amazing success because it was also very well done. Starting from the collaboration that we started with Matteo Toon, who is a very multicultural architect and designer. Matteo Toon is is from the German part of Italy, from Bolzano. So he's kind of Mitteleuropean as a culture, but he's based in Milan. So he's very much into the design culture of Milan, but he's very much with the many contaminations, Zen contamination from Japan and so on. So he really had the cultural, let's say, suppleness to really be able to express this idea. And then it was just about execution. It started in the right way by naming collection. So it has to be a collection. It has to be limited in the number of pieces that we produce and symbolic. So I think we have been pretty good in nurturing this project in the last 27 years now and make it a— Well, well, well respected internationally. So, and this created such a strong, let's say, association with the contemporary arts. We are kind of permanent partner of the Venice Biennale. Even this year we are the official sponsor. And so I think this will be, I hope it will be continued like that and be eternal.

Do you think the aesthetics of Do you think the cup that you drink your coffee from impacts the taste?

Yes, I think so. Because at the end of the day, any experience is polysensual. And so every sense adds to the perception and emotion. So if I eat this wonderful San Pellegrino and the bottle is ugly, then my perception will be different compared what it is in this beautiful glass bottle.

Hmm.

And the same is true for anything. So any sense, including noise, we are here in a beautiful and quiet space where we can have a nice conversation because we don't have any disturbance. So if you would have anything disturbing us, it would jeopardize the overall perception. And some people like me tends to be, as you say, those people who confuse the senses, that you confuse taste with colors and so on.

Synesthesia.

Synesthesia, synesthetic. For sure, in my case, I don't think I confuse, But I can link. So if I see a coffee or a dish or a fruit, I can predict the taste by the color or by the aspect. And the only thing that can confuse me is when— because just to tell you, in agriculture now, they put ether on fruits in order to develop the color before maturity. So you see a fruit which apparently you predict it will taste in one way, but it's maybe more acidic because it has been artificially kind of painted. So these are the kind of connection between visual, particularly visual, because visual is the most powerful.

Mm-hmm.

You get an order of— because it's only electrical, right? Whereas all other senses, you need to translate chemical into electrical in order to get perception. So It's a long process and you, of course, decrease the number of bits per second that you get. So this is why the visual is the most powerful, most powerful, let's say, perception, let's say, channel, and it enhances any other, including sound, including music.

I want to bring up a couple other projects that you've been involved with culturally that I think are relevant and interesting. In 2014, You helped fund a movie, uh, with the filmmaker Leslie Chilcott, um, about Costa Rican women who pick coffee beans. The film's called A Small Section of the World. And, um, the year after that, you also helped fund Scent of a Dream: Travels in the World of Coffee. It was a book that Sebastián Salgado did. Why these projects? And how do you decide kind of which cultural projects to get involved in and help support? Right.

These 2 projects have something in common, which is coffee growers. We want to show the beauty of people and places where coffee is grown.

Mm-hmm.

And this is to the mutual benefit of the consumer who can enjoy the beauty of people and places and to the benefit of those producers who can be, let's say, proud of what they are. And we're trying to bring these 2 stakeholders together to such an extent that we have this wonderful Ernesto Illy Award here in New York, which is the epicenter of the consumer society. And we have these 27 growers coming from the most incredible countries where coffee is grown. to come to New York for the first time in their life as a dream that they are simply not even believe that it became true, and they meet plenty of consumer. So, consumer can literally discover the culture and even the physical presence of those coffee growers. And the same time, finally, the coffee growers, they can see somebody drinking their coffee and how they react. And this is love, I mean.

That's really farm to table in a whole new way.

And through Sebastião Salgado. Sebastião Salgado, I can tell you my story with him. Sebastião was famous to take pictures of, let's say, to blame poverty pollution, the bad things happening particularly in developing countries. So when I met Sebastião, I told him, you do the most beautiful photographies in life, but I want you to completely invert your perception. But this time you are going to pull out the beauty of what you see. I want you to show beauty of people, of the land, etc. And it worked very well. And very soon after, he started his magnificent Genesis project. I don't want to say that our work did inspire Genesis, for sure not, but Sebastião, started with us as a first project, a brand new mindset for him from, let's say, the ugliest things in life to the most beautiful, let's say, details of nature. Have you seen the Genesis Project?

Yes. It's incredible.

Yeah. And with the Costa Rican project, we wanted to represent the same thing. We wanted to To show, we wanted to narrate that you can make it. We wanted to narrate how profound can be the engagement of coffee growers in what they do.

Hmm.

Because people drinking a coffee cup like it would be a commodity, they have their caffeine kick and then they go. Maybe they don't know even where the coffee comes from and how much passion, dedication there is behind this cup of coffee. We wanted to really give a sense.

Slow it down and understand. Yeah. I want to go back in time now to 1964. You're in Trieste. Young Andrea Illy has been born. And I understand you were 4 years old when you tasted your first cup of coffee. And in those days, it took This is what you write in your book, 45 minutes, sometimes even an hour to prepare a good cup of coffee.

This was my mother. I was joking my mother is the engineer of coffee because she was in charge of the coffee machine department, and she was also always seeking for something new in order to make a better coffee. So the coffee pod was not existing yet. So the first experiment was to try to make espresso coffee at home, which was nearly impossible because the only possibility was to use beans and we needed a grinder. But there were no home-sized, let's say, grinders. There were only professional grinders. So It was the kind of a paradox that we had a little tiny espresso machine, a gigantic grinder. And of course, with this gigantic grinder, it was very difficult to find the right grinding. Mm-hmm. So it was either too coarse or too fine. So she had probably to do 10 cups before to find the right grinding and get a decent espresso. And she was very precise with her— A waiter, you say that?

Her scale.

And to precisely measure exactly 6.95 grams in order to get— so it was funny. And I was a baby, I was watching, and it was very funny. Also because of the smell and the sound, everything was pleasant. I have good memories. Lightning is an imprinting for me.

I'm sure watching it be made over that long period of time. I mean—

Every day.

Not 45 seconds, 45 minutes. Probably instilled something in you.

Yes. It's also because when the cup was perfect, sometimes I was receiving a tip of a spoon in order to taste with some sugar. And I liked the taste already as a baby. So, I was probably 2 years old when I started experiencing this, this, this. And I've seen that my daughters did experience the same.

Oh, wow.

Because my daughter, 2 years old, I have pictures, they were preparing espresso with a convenient paper pods machine and they were very happy to do this espresso. So it's very good for kids.

I understand in high school you flunked your first year and your father kind of gave you a choice. He said, you can stay in Trieste, become a Qualified technician, or go study abroad, change your lifestyle. We obviously know which path you chose at this stage, but what did that kind of moment mean to you, and how did your training as a chemist kind of shape who you are today?

Well, it was at this crossroad in my life. I was 14 years old. I said, oh, okay, okay. I have to take responsibility. This has been my driver. I said, responsibility. I want to be responsible. I want to be able to be capable to walk in my father's footsteps and continue what he's doing. I said, okay, it's time to be responsible. And I completely changed my mindset. And I went there studying, studying, studying, studying like crazy in order to really make it in the best possible way and as soon as possible. So as far as my studies in chemistry, I chose chemistry because not only because he did study chemistry, I thought it was important to be in the same frame of reference as he was. You shall consider that the company was still tiny and a very typical family business. So you had to take over this expertise, knowledge, everything from your father. So how can you do it if you have a completely different background? And none of my brothers decided to do To make the same studies of my brother, my father. So it was either me or nobody. So I said, okay, I accept to do. But on my, let's say, also evaluation, I consider that chemistry is a very good fundamental discipline for— we call it, I don't know if you can say that in English, formamentis. It's a kind of way of thinking, way of approaching knowledge, way of addressing problems in your life. So it's a kind of a cultural approach. You know what I mean?

Mm-hmm.

Because it gives you a good background in fundamental chemistry, mathematics, physics, biology, I can speak with any scientist thanks to the fact that I'm not overspecialized. Because if I would be a biologist, I would be maybe hyper-specialized in life. If I would be a physicist, I would be hyper-specialized. Chemistry is broad enough that allows me because it's touching any of those aspects. So I was happy to do it because this allows me to kind of direct a multidisciplinary research approach, which ranges from agronomy, biology, agronomy, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, whatever.

Mm-hmm.

Whatever is necessary because in coffee you have all of that. All of that. It's incredible. All of that. We have physics, in the percolation of the coffee cup. You have chemistry in the way you roast, in all the aroma. You have biology in the way you grow it, and so on. And you have engineering in the way you do the coffee equipment, for instance, or preparation, et cetera. So, it's very multidisciplinary, and I think chemistry is the right choice. I don't regret it.

And you joined Illy's quality control department in 1990. I understand While you were there, you made some changes to ensure the quality of the coffee. These were inspired in part by practices you'd seen happen in Japan.

Yes.

I was curious, what were those practices in Japan that you saw?

So, we completely shifted the paradigm from quality control to quality assurance. This was the fundamental change we did. And the quality assurance was born in Japan during the, let's say, huge Japanese success at the end of World War II. And actually, the paradigm is that quality and quantity go along. So it's not about producing quantity and then checking whether the quality is there. Quality is embedded in the production system. This is So quality control doesn't make any sense because quality control has to be embedded in the industrial process. This has been the fundamental cultural shift. I would say beyond cultural shift because culture for the people in the plant to understand that they are the ultimate responsible of quality, and this is very much an accountability, but also knowing exactly what you're doing, not simply mechanically, execute something, but knowing what and how you have to execute things in order to have this quality control. But there's also a knowledge shift because in order to make this transformation, we needed to objectivize knowledge. So if you have health quality control and you have a lab checking, is it good or bad? Good or bad? Good or bad? This is the discrimination factor upon the level of expertise of the of the, let's say, the scientist or the technician in the lab. Whereas you need to say, no, no, no, no, it is good because it has this specification and this control method that you are supposed to control in the production line. So it took us 4 years to make this transition from quality control to quality assurance.

And that was 1994 when you took over the CEO role?

No, this was in 1990 when I entered the company. And when we completed the job in 1994 by accident, It was the same time I became CEO.

And how did you transition from chemist to executive? I mean, I imagine there's quite a learning curve in becoming—

Oh yeah, this is a good question. So a lot of studies, self-education, many, many, many, many books like crazy, and as many possible business courses at the Bocconi University and other, as many possible conferences. So I'm really obsessed with knowledge, as I said before. And so I was always kind of behind. So instead of having this knowledge, let's say, in advance, I try to study things one by one. This was not necessarily the perfect model because eventually in some disciplines I ended to be good enough from the theoretical point of view, but not good enough from the practical point of view. Take marketing. I can probably write books on marketing about positioning, about whatever, let's say theoretical aspect of marketing, But then the executional one to really deploy this theory in a way that they are very effective in developing the market, this is a different story. So this is why I eventually decided to step down as a CEO when I understood that marketing was becoming such a critical success factor for business that as a non-marketeer, It was better to give the company leadership to a marketeer, which I did.

And how would you describe what you do for Illy Cafe now? What's your sort of vision, your mission?

You know, I'm in a kind of a sweet spot because I can think long-term and I can be the brand ambassador. So I can put my face, my heart, and my brain, everything on the brand without being distracted by day-to-day operations and without being concerned about the level of execution because I know that the company is in very good hands. So of course you can do so as long as you have a very, very good relationship with your with your CEO, which I'm fortunate to have. So it's really a kind of symbiosis, the one we have, because we nourish each other, you see? And this allows me to think long-term, but at the same time, be a mentor for the CEO in order for him to really build not only the short, medium term, but also the long-term one. But at the same time, while I'm thinking about the long term, he's my sparring partner. Hey, did you think about that maybe this is too visionary or whatever? So it's good.

I understand you recently went on a sabbatical. Why'd you take a sabbatical and what sort of value do you see in the idea of the sabbatical?

This is a very good question. So my philosophy is that business needs to be probably the most responsible part of the society because two-thirds of the economy is made by private sector businesses. So I like this philosophical, let's say, metaphor from Voltaire, cultivate your garden. If everybody would cultivate his garden, we would have a definitely better world. And so as an ethical business, I want to take responsibility to improve the society. And now we have an imperative, which is decarbonize the society. In the next 50 years, we need to revolutionize the world from Carbon positive to carbon negative and sequester carbon. It's not only about limiting carbon emission; it's about becoming carbon negative. So which is a Copernican revolution that we need to do. And I said, okay, as a responsible company, I have to start now. So I said we have a symbolic deadline, which is our. Centennial anniversary in 2033, and by 2033 I want my company to be carbon-free. So how to make it? Can we buy carbon credits somewhere? I know circular economy. I would like to sink carbon from the air into the somewhere in the in our own cycles where. So the idea has been to study a soil-to-soil coffee carbon cycle. Coffee as an agricultural product is quite carbon efficient, but it can be carbon negative if you sink organic carbon in the soil, which is the best strategy to sequestrate carbon from the air. And by enriching soil with organic matter, you make it more biodiverse, you have a better water conservation, and you build fertility. You literally build soil. If you compare to most of the so-called conventional agriculture paradigm, which is using soil as a support to grow, Plants and by supporting with the inputs that you give, agrochemicals inputs. The idea of carbon-efficient agriculture is that you first build the soil and then crop the plant. And this is highly effective, feasible, possible, is not necessarily organic. Organic can be regenerative, can be, let's say, carbon efficient. It's something new, which I call it virtuous agriculture. I was lucky to find the name. Virtuous is about 2 virtues, which is beneficial for the environment and is protective against non-communicable diseases. And of course, this is a virtuous cycle combining The two things, so it's a it's an idea which is now let's say decently defined. I will finalize the idea definition in the next two three months, and then set up a scientific committee to validate the idea. And if the idea will be validated by them, then we will start planning for the research plan, and then. funding, creating a governance because luckily this idea can go much beyond coffee because coffee is just one of the many agricultural products. And this Virtuous Agriculture framework can be applied to multiple crops.

Yeah.

Many, many other crops. I

mean, I think the idea of cultivating your garden can be applied to anything and everything.

Absolutely. In an environmental beneficial way and also Also, you know, good for your health, for human health.

So we started this conversation with beauty. I want to end it with beauty as well. And I'm just curious, what are, in your mind, some of the most beautiful places on Earth that you've been? What are the places that you go to slow down, that you go to unplug, that that move you?

Well, I have 3 things in my mind. The city of Trieste, because it's kind of— there is everything. You have the sea, you have the architecture, which is amazing, and you have the plateau, the land, which is simply a jewel of beauty as a city. And I'm more connected to the, let's say, beauty of the city from the geographical point of view, let's say, compared to the cultural one. But of course, the culture is also—

Part of the—

Symbiotic with the beauty of the place. And the other places which come to my mind are Wine farms, wineries. Yeah, vineyards. And coffee plantations, which are the places where I can really— We have a winery in Tuscany, in the middle of this Val d'Orcia.

Oh my God.

The silence and the natural beauty, uncontaminated. It's so beautiful. And I find the same, exact same beauty in the coffee plantation when I visit them wherever I go, if it's in Africa or in India or in Brazil or in Central America. This is what I love.

Well, Andrea, thank you for coming. It was great to have you here today.

My pleasure.

Thanks for listening. You can find more episodes of the Time Sensitive Podcast on our website, timesensitive.fm, or on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher. You can follow us on Instagram @slowdown.tv.