A typical day harvesting coffee
The work that goes into your cup
I’m British, married my Peruvian wife back in 2003 in a bilingual ceremony in which my wife (whose English wasn't great back then) accepted me as her loving wife (I so wanted to laugh). I now have dual nationality having been living, married to a Peruvian in Peru for some years, and have gone from coffee virgin (having never drunk the stuff) to loving it in all its miraculous incarnations. Oh, and I also have an organic coffee farm on the slopes of the Peruvian cloud forest a few hours walk from Machu Picchu.
It’s 5am, the blasted cockerel has been screeching for about half an hour or more and attempts to throw avocado pips at it in your boxers in the mist were not successful. It’s time to get up. Breakfast is on the go, usually something filling like rice with eggs, a couple of fried yuca, some avocado, onion and tuna salad, fresh juice, some banana pancakes…nothing fancy. It’s not hot yet, that’s the advantage of getting up early, so tools and equipment are gathered for the day’s harvest.
Organic coffee farming in Peru is done by hand. Farms in this region (La Convencion) are usually on steep slopes at altitudes ranging from 1000 to 2300 metres above sea-level. What people take to the fields for the day depends on their habits but usually the following items are indispensable:
Atadera: A square blanket made of plastic fibres that you tie around your shoulders to put the coffee in when picked.
Hat, long sleeved shirt, bug spray: Sun’s hot, lots of fruit flies.
Empty sacks: To collect everyone’s coffee in at the end of the day.
Machete/kituchi: Cutting tools to clear overgrown areas and remove weeds or vines that are strangling the coffee plants.
Penknife: Optional, most people can perform intricate tasks with a machete; useful for peeling fruit during rest periods.
Lunch: It’s too far and too time-consuming to return home for lunch so we take food with us, still in the pot, wrapped up with blankets to keep it hot. Sometimes, depending on how busy we are, one or two people will take food up and cook on a makeshift fire (fogon) and call the workers when it is ready.
We aim to leave the house in the morning as early as possible. We used to have a truck to get to our farm (5 minute drive uphill) but we have recently sold it. Some days we would walk up, carrying everything with us. This is normal for the vast majority of families and they can carry loads most of us back home wouldn’t touch without a full medical beforehand. If we leave around 6am we’re doing well, usually it’s later.
On arriving at the farm we have to walk to the area for the day’s picking. Coffee matures at different rates at different altitudes and different varieties sometimes ripen at different times according to the rains. Add to that the fact that not all of the cherries ont he same plant will ripen at the same time and there’s some serious planning to be done to make the day an effective one. Our main farm stretches from 1597m to 1700m above sea-level so we often have to find the plants that are ready. When coffee is farmed with chemicals it is often ripe all at once, making picking a frantic affair, but there again those farms are able to hire labour and they are often in countries with flat farms like Brazil who are the world leaders in terms of production.
Local people in our region (and many others) have the habit of chewing coca leaf when they work. The dry leaf is packed into their cheeks, on upon the other, until a thick wad is formed that will keep them going for a few hours. They mix the leaves with ‘gypta’ which is ash-based substance that acts as a catalyst for the leaves to release certain chemicals. People say that the leaves suppress hunger and give energy, making local farmers able to work almost all day with little food or rest. This may have been the case at one time, but more recently this habit is used more as an excuse to take a break and is grudgingly respected by host farmers. This routine can happen up to 3 or 4 times a day and lasts for 15 — 25 minutes depending on the tolerance of the host farmer. It’s more of a tradition than a necessity, but local people like their traditions and are stubborn when it comes to change.
A day is as productive as the people who are picking. Some people can pick 46 kilos or more of coffee cherries in a single day whereas I struggled to pick even 10 kilos on my first attempt. If it’s done correctly, coffee picking is a delicate operation that selects only the ripe ‘cherries’. I like to think I pick far less because I’m only picking the right beans, and in part I can justify this. Locals are what we call ‘strippers’, and not in the good sense. They rip at the plants, pulling off a large quantity of ripe cherries but also some underripe ones and some that aren’t even nearly ready. As well as this they damage the tiny stems that connect the bean tot he plant and this has been shown to affect future crops. Twigs, leaves, overripe, underripe all in the mix. This isn’t how it should be done, but that’s how it IS done on most farms.
Lunch is welcomed by all and people regularly drink water (or often ‘chicha’ a fermented corn drink, slightly alcoholic if left for several days) because the sun gets hot by around 9am. Midday is often baking and everyone takes time to pile on the calories and lie down. The morning’s coffee cherries are tipped into large sacks (some will have performed this operation once already in the morning) and we eat. The flies are constant. Your hands are usually the worst affected because the sweet juice from the coffee cherries leaks onto them making an irresistible treat for the fruit flies. Eating is usually accompanied by occasional, jerky swiping that looks a little bit nutty. Portions in Peru are huge and you’d be amazed at seeing a tiny lady put away a plate of food your uncle Pete would struggle to finish. There’s something about the culture in rural communities that makes free food something you don’t waste. If you offer someone extra food they’ll always take it, even if their stomach is fit to burst. I tend to eat well but despite my legendary appetite back home I’m not even a contender in local terms.
Once the day’s picking is over around 4pm or slightly later the cherries have to be carried in those large sacks down to the house or at least the waiting truck in our case. A landslide destroyed about 8 acres of our farm in 2007 making it harder for us as our home is now down by the river and that’s where we have to process everything until we can rebuild up top. A full sack of wet coffee cherries can weigh up to 80kg (two bags of cement) and the terrain is steep and muddy. I’ve never seen a bad fall and I’ve only once seen someone stop to rest on the way down. People here are tough. Once we get the crop down to the house it’s imperative that we mill the coffee straight away. The red (or yellow) outer skins have to be removed and most locals use a wet hand mill to do this. First of all the coffee is ‘floated’ to separate the good from the bad. A large concrete tank is filled with water and the sacks of coffee are poured in. This floating tank is very important. Bad cherries, those which have diseased or damaged beans inside, will float to the surface and can be skimmed off with a plastic colander into a separate container for processing later. The coffee is churned up in the water by hand or using a broom or rake to constantly give the bad cherries the chance to show themselves. Once you’re happy that the coffee you have in the tank is good you can release it through the plugged lower end that leads through a pipe or shoot to the waiting mill which is cranked by hand. This is back-breaking work. I only know one person who has a motor for their mill and we’re desperate to get one too when our new processing area is up and running, but for now it’s elbow-grease and turn-taking. Someone has to control the flow of coffee and water coming through to the mill as it would be too tiring to mill without a break. The mills are usually green (not sure why) and made locally or regionally. A large, heavy metal drum fills the main body of the device and the coffee is squashed between this and the walls, sending the liberated beans to the front and the waiting fermentation tank/area and the husks behind to a sluice channel that takes them to the composting area. Coffee husks are one of the best composting materials around and they go right back to the farm if the farmer knows what they’re doing.
Often we finish milling at around 6:30pm when it’s already dark and we just want to go to bed. This is different for each farmer though and our lives are complicated right now by the distances and the improvised processing area we have had to set up. The milled coffee stays in the fermentation tank for an average of 12 hours (the following morning someone will have to deal with it) as many people believe this is the right length of time, but in countries like Cameroon they leave it for twice that time. Fermentation allows some of the sugars to break down (coffee beans are covered by a sticky, sweet mucilage that needs to be removed before drying) and most people in our area use dry fermentation where the beans are left in their own juices to rest. What comes next is washing with large quantities of water to remove the remaining mucilage so that the beans can be dried.
Drying should ideally be done on raised beds that allow airflow around the bean and which also minimises contact with contaminants that could alter the flavour and quality of the coffee. However, most of the coffee produced in countries like Peru is dried on people’s concrete patio floors or on plastic tarpaulin. There are clear disadvantages to doing this. First and foremost is the fact that farmers have chickens, ducks and other small animals that will wander around over the coffee, occasionally do their business on it and other twigs, leaves and dust/sand get into the beans. The concrete itself may impart something to the coffee and the heat generated on a concrete floor in the afternoon sun can also cause the beans to dry out too much. Drying takes between 2 to 3 days depending on the weather. Often you’ll see people rushing out to cover their coffee with plastic as the rain begins. This is part of the way of life for people even though a select few are learning to build more permanent structures to allow them to air-dry their coffee under a roof that allows them to ignore the rainfall. There’s a long way to go to get our neighbours modernised in their processes; we’re hoping to lead by example, but it’s taking us time to get organised ourselves with all of the responsibilities of running a farm and hostel at the same time.
I heard some one taking at the London Coffee Festival in 2012 who said
“…once coffee has been picked there is nothing you can do to improve its quality, but there are a lot of things you can do to ruin it”
I totally agree with this and have tasted the difference between coffee that has been looked after and coffee that has been neglected.
There’s a huge knowledge gap between the people who farm coffee and the people who retail it. I deliberately leave out the end consumer because they’re as much in the dark about the complexities of this magic little bean as the growers. What’s interesting about the source though is that farmers around the world are contributing to one of the world’s most favoured crops and they don’t have a clue about the hype connected with coffee.
Locals don’t even drink their own product. Farmers sell their entire harvest to the local cooperatives (more about them in another article) and they drink the overripe or semi-rotten ‘coco’ which has fermented on the plant or wasn't processed quickly enough to sell. The quality difference between a good coffee and this (pardon my French) crap, is about as far as possible on any given scale. But, through years of drinking it, many are actually convinced this is how coffee tastes. We could say of course that if they’re happy that we shouldn't judge them, quite right. But I dare you to drink a cup without wondering why they even bother. In recent years, instant coffee has become more popular with slight increases in local people’s economic standards and a host of companies offering sachets to the masses. Nestlé is of course the leader in this field, being the largest single buyer of robusta coffee beans on the planet I have been told, but Peruvian companies are now entering the market and venturing even into Europe.
But the slick coffee-culture typified by the chains in the West haven’t even shown up on the radar of local farmers. The multi-billion dollar industry that surrounds coffee is unknown to our neighbours. Perhaps, being cynical, the west wants to keep things this way. Perhaps it wouldn't be in their best interests for farmers to realize that their crop is being sold for hundreds of times its original value? The simple lifestyles that our neighbours have are incompatible with free wifi and iced lattes so it’s not surprising they wouldn't understand, but I’m still surprised that they haven’t done more research on where their crop is going once it leaves the field. Our family has of course lived both in the UK and here in Peru so we know the value of our crop and are trying to make the most of it by carefully selecting our beans, processing them appropriately and roasting in small batches to sell directly to passing tourists.
One thing it’s important to note is that 100kg of wet, harvested coffee cherries will lose a huge percentage of its mass on milling and drying and a further 20% on roasting. From that 100kg of picked cherries you’d be lucky to end up with 55kg of roasted product. Last year, farmers in our area got paid $75 for 46 kilos of dried coffee. Let’s say the buyers and roasters got 35 kilos of roasted end product to retail in a nice coffee shop. One kilo of roasted coffee can make around 40 espressos. 35 x 40 = 1400 espressos from those 35 kilos. If an espresso retails at even the lowly price of $2 then you’re looking at $2800 from that one sack. My goodness.
I often have fantasties about taking some of our neighbours to the UK and showing them a really swanky coffee shop in London. I can picture their amazement at how one product could be the spark that generates such incredible revenue. The addiction the west has with coffee is something we all take for granted, but the people doing the hard graft in the fields have no clue what we’re doing with this little black beauty. I've skipped through the processes with fair speed and have left little details out because otherwise I’d have to put everything into chapters and serialize the article, but I hope I've given a flavour of what goes on to produce your morning cup. It’s a million miles from a refrigerated muffin display case.
