The Coffee Farmers

Part 2: Growing and picking coffee

Growing coffee

"Welcome to my farm!" cries Pamela when Gregorio and David arrive. "Look how wonderful it is! Look what we have done! Look what we have made here! ... Sit down everyone! Eat!"

Pablo shows Gregorio and David his farm. Each of Pablo's plants will produce coffee beans for about 15 years; on farms lower down the mountainside, the plants live longer, but they produce fewer beans. The fruit of the coffee plants are red when they are ripe, and they are called cherries.

RIPE:( adj) ready to be picked

Picking the coffee cherries

When the coffee cherries are ripe, they are picked. Every year, labourers come down from the high mountains to help with the harvest. They live in a shed beside the house. Although the labourers use the polite word "owners" when they speak to Pablo and Pamela, there is really little difference between the labourers and the farmers.

Pamela and Pablo sell some of their beans to ordinary coffee buyers, but they also sell beans to "fair trade" buyers. They take special care with the coffee cherries that will be sold to the fair trade coffee buyers.

COFFEE CHERRY: the name for the fruit of the coffee plant. (The coffee beans are inside the cherries)

HARVEST: (n) when the crop is picked (also verb)

FAIR TRADE: for information, see
Fair Trade in Coffee and
A Coffee Farmer's Opinion

"We are careful to select only the best coffee cherries for them, the ones that are perfectly ripe. It is a risk for us. There is only one day when they are perfect. If it rains on that day, then they will fall from the bushes (plants) and are lost. But it is a risk we are happy to take to produce the best quality coffee."

WORD: (part of speech) definition

Separating and cleaning the coffee beans

After the coffee cherries have been picked, they are put into a wooden trough that is full of water. At first the coffee cherries float, but as they begin to ferment, they sink slowly to the bottom.
Then the fermenting coffee cherries are taken out of the trough and spread out to fry for a few hours.
The next step is to separate the cherry fruit from the hard bean inside. Pamela and Pablo have made a simple machine to do this job.

Then the coffee beans must be cleaned. They are covered in a thick, sticky coating, and it takes a lot of work to clean them. They are scrubbed and rinsed in fresh water five or six times.

Pablo explains that all these steps must be done exactly right in order to make the best quality coffee.

TROUGH: (n) a long, open container

FERMENT: (v) to change chemically

Drying the beans

When the beans are finally clean, they are spread out in the sun for two or three days to dry. The beans for the ordinary coffee buyers are spread on plastic sheets on the ground. But the beans for the fair trade coffee are put on special platforms, where the air can get underneath them and dry them more effectively. Every night - and during the day if it is likely to rain - the beans must be collected and taken inside, to keep them dry.

Pablo and Pamela check the beans carefully to see when they are completely dry. The beans still have their outer covering on them and, when they are perfectly dry, they can be kept for a long time without losing any quality. That is why coffee can be grown so far from the factories where it will be processed.

PLATFORM: a small floor, raised off the ground.

PROCESSED: to process something is to change it from its natural form into the product that people buy and use.

The work and the price

On the day that Gregorio and David were visiting, a neighbouring farmer told Pablo that the price of coffee had fallen on the New York Coffee Exchange.

"The price does not adequately reflect the work we put in, the costs we have to pay to maintain out families, employ labourers and everything else. We produce coffee here of the highest quality, without using chemical fertilizers, herbicides or fungicides. Our coffee is completely organic and should receive a better price. That is all I, Pablo Cahuana Flores, have to say at the moment."

NEW YORK COFFEE EXCHENGE: (n) the place where much of the coffee from Latin America is traded

FERTILIZER: something that makes plants grow better

HERBICIDE: a substance used to kill weeds

ORGANIC: organic crops are grown naturally, without artificial fertilizers and so on