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About the Coffee Picking Process
I would like to share some data related to the coffee picking process. Sometimes little attention is paid to the manpower needed in coffee countries to collect the harvest. The manpower still available in many producers’ countries, however better opportunities in urban areas force many to move from the coffee production region to more populated regions.
This is a short article that recognizes that millions of men and women help to collect each year the raw material used to produce millions of cups of coffee drank all over the world. Each season hard workers (or pickers) wake up early to spend most of their day in the coffee fields collecting berries that end up in your cup of coffee.
The labor cost of producing one pound of green coffee represents 60% to 70% of the total cost at the farm stage. In Colombia, 800,000 people are employed each year during the coffee harvest season; most of these workers migrate from one region to another searching for farms where the harvest is still in progress. The most skillful pickers are able to collect up to 550 pounds of ripe berries per day making around $30 US dollars.
Most coffee producing countries have workers collect the coffee berries by hand; just few countries, such as Brazil, use heavy machinery to perform the harvest. The reasons to employ people instead of machines in Colombia and many other producer countries are challenges such as steep slopes where the coffee is grown making it unfeasible to implement a mechanical system.
I would like to add that there are two basic techniques to collect berries from the coffee tree. One is called picking, which is mainly done for washed Arabica coffee – the worker selectively chooses only the ripe berries to harvest. The second technique is called stripping and consists of removing unselectively all the berries on the branch. The reason to use the stripping technique is scarce or expensive manpower combined with a large and flat farm where a mechanical harvest is cost-effective to implement. The problem with the stripping procedure is that unripe berries could account for 15% to 38% of the harvested beans. The technique could not only negatively affect the quality of the cup but also the healthiness of the plant.
Over the past 160 years, pickers have used their hands and a basket to collect the coffee harvest in Colombia. Few improvements have been made at this stage.
Finally, I would like to share the following link regarding coffee pickers called the Coffee Nomads (Los Nómadas del café). I found it few weeks ago, it is in Spanish however with an extensive photo library you do not need to speak Spanish to understand how the picking process that takes place in producing countries is a culture in itself.
http://www.eltiempo.com/media/produccion/nomadasDelCafe/
You will find the following options (among others) on the website:
Retratos de recolectores (“Pictures from coffee pickers”), Un día con los andariegos “One day with the travelers”), Almuerzo a la carrera (“Fast Food”), Luis y Arancy, amor entre los cafetales (“Luis and Arancy, love story within the coffee farm”).
-- Andres Castro
I would like to share some data related to the coffee picking process. Sometimes little attention is paid to the manpower needed in coffee countries to collect the harvest. The manpower still available in many producers’ countries, however better opportunities in urban areas force many to move from the coffee production region to more populated regions.
This is a short article that recognizes that millions of men and women help to collect each year the raw material used to produce millions of cups of coffee drank all over the world. Each season hard workers (or pickers) wake up early to spend most of their day in the coffee fields collecting berries that end up in your cup of coffee.
The labor cost of producing one pound of green coffee represents 60% to 70% of the total cost at the farm stage. In Colombia, 800,000 people are employed each year during the coffee harvest season; most of these workers migrate from one region to another searching for farms where the harvest is still in progress. The most skillful pickers are able to collect up to 550 pounds of ripe berries per day making around $30 US dollars.
Most coffee producing countries have workers collect the coffee berries by hand; just few countries, such as Brazil, use heavy machinery to perform the harvest. The reasons to employ people instead of machines in Colombia and many other producer countries are challenges such as steep slopes where the coffee is grown making it unfeasible to implement a mechanical system.
I would like to add that there are two basic techniques to collect berries from the coffee tree. One is called picking, which is mainly done for washed Arabica coffee – the worker selectively chooses only the ripe berries to harvest. The second technique is called stripping and consists of removing unselectively all the berries on the branch. The reason to use the stripping technique is scarce or expensive manpower combined with a large and flat farm where a mechanical harvest is cost-effective to implement. The problem with the stripping procedure is that unripe berries could account for 15% to 38% of the harvested beans. The technique could not only negatively affect the quality of the cup but also the healthiness of the plant.
Over the past 160 years, pickers have used their hands and a basket to collect the coffee harvest in Colombia. Few improvements have been made at this stage.
Finally, I would like to share the following link regarding coffee pickers called the Coffee Nomads (Los Nómadas del café). I found it few weeks ago, it is in Spanish however with an extensive photo library you do not need to speak Spanish to understand how the picking process that takes place in producing countries is a culture in itself.
http://www.eltiempo.com/media/produccion/nomadasDelCafe/
You will find the following options (among others) on the website:
Retratos de recolectores (“Pictures from coffee pickers”), Un día con los andariegos “One day with the travelers”), Almuerzo a la carrera (“Fast Food”), Luis y Arancy, amor entre los cafetales (“Luis and Arancy, love story within the coffee farm”).
-- Andres Castro
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Miguel Zamora on
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Hi,
Thank you for sharing this. It has great info about the work of an almost-forgotten group in the coffee industry. The article from El Tiempo has some great pictures! -
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Permalink Reply by Joachim Oster on
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The article topic is very, very important: The pickers are the unsung heroes when it comes to a good cup!
Coffee picking here in Hawaii is a different ball game. We have of course USA labor laws which prevent child- or anything resembling slave labor and guaranteeing some kind of minimum wage. Basically the picker (mostly male) is paid by the pound of cherry picked, like everywhere else in the coffee world. Make that 50 cents per pound (p.p.) in 2008. Needing approx. 7 pounds of coffee cherry for one pound of roasted Kona coffee, you can see that it contains $3.50 just for collecting the beans. Versus 40 or 60 cents in many other nations. A good picker can collect btw 250 pounds per day (400 is not unheard of). Which means he earns around $ 125 per day, +/- $3,000 a month with 6 work days per week. The good pickers are either seasonal workers from Mexico, or Mexicans living here in Hawaii or California. Some get charged for housing, or have to pay 5 cents per pound to a 'patron' who organized their stay and work permits here. They have to pay for their own food, which is not cheap and most likely their highest expense. Some large farms have permanent workers living on their properties year round, while the migrant workers come in August and leave in December/January. Like with any US farm harvest labor, there is a certain quota of illegal workers knowingly or unknowingly being hired by the farmers. The Dept of Labor has a sometimes 'don't ask, don't tell' policy it seems, yet this year they started cracking down on illegal construction workers in Oahu, pushed by the unions in the weakening economic climate. If the harvest is not big enough, or the p.p. picking price falls much below 50 cents, many pickers decide simply not to come to Hawaii, because their earnings would not make sense and they rather pick strawberry or lettuce in California. Then we coffee farmers are certainly in trouble, because the fruits may rot on the trees. Problem is that not many locals are available, willing or able to pick coffee. Because it is simply VERY HARD WORK. I am always astonished how few local farmers have ever tried it for a whole day or said that they can pick 30 - 50 pounds per day only. To get 200 pounds per day, one has to concentrate on each hand move, not waste time with breaks, plan your steps, maintain the same speed, not be afraid of spider webs or rain, and get into a certain groove. Also a high amount in the bag maybe good for the picker, but if it is to the expense that there are many green beans picked versus red ones, it can be very annoying. So it behoofs the farmer to check during the daytime that the not too many leaves, green beans find their ways into the burlap bags. Unripe beans make a lousy coffee! Once they are mixed there's no technique to separate them from the ripe ones anymore. BTW: Our farm record of picked coffee cherries per day is held by a woman: 465 pounds per day. -
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Permalink Reply by Andres Castro on
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Hello
Thanks for showing interest in this topic, no many coffee lovers know how difficult is to bring just one bean to the market. In addition, most of the beans traded in the world have been handle by hand at least one time. Another topic that I would like to write is the hand picking defect that take place in many mills around the world, this is also another hard work and underestimated one. Finally, Joachim could you please tell us how is the density of coffee trees per acre (trees/acre) and how much cherries do you expect from that area. -
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Sorry for getting back late on this, Andres. Reg: density of coffee trees per acre (trees/acre) and how much cherries do you expect from that area?
We have old growth coffee trees on our farm. Meaning no rows or actual paths. Steep hill, many uncleareed rocks. Spacing is +/- 5'x5' (1.5 m x 1.5m) with this method. Per acre 1000 trees, which is pretty dense. The cherry production this year was 11000 pounds, which was a bit above normal (10000 is the norm for us). We luckily have only 8-10% below grade green beans. I know there are Kona coffee farms which are much lower in yield, especially at lower altitudes. The average is a bit below our farm. Our labor costs are higher because of the non-row planting.
Other farms have rows for machinery and those have 700-800 trees per acre. Yield depends on pruning method, fertilizer use, irrigation, organic or not organic, and altitude of farm. -
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Hello Joachim
Thanks for the info. In Central America and South America the density of trees is higher I guess the field and type of soil help to make a different arrangement.
Until next time.
Andres Castro -
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