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Far more is done on a coffee plantation than
just growing and harvesting the fruit. When coffee cherries ripen, they
must be picked almost immediately, not an easy thing to time when a
single tree's fruit is in various stages of maturity simultaneously. In
most arabica-growing areas the ripe cherries will be carefully
hand-picked and dropped into the picker's basket, the weight of which
determines the picker's pay and, in areas of smoother terrain and
shorter trees, can be as heavy as 100kg or 220lb by the end of the day.
The same tree will be visited on several different days as more cherries
ripen. A harvester will
"strip-pick" the entire tree when the majority of its cherries are ripe,
by sliding his or her fingers down the branches, causing all the
cherries, ripe or not, to fall to the ground. Alternatively, a large
vehicle will be driven slowly down the row of coffee trees, and its
revolving arms will knock the looser, and hopefully riper, fruit to the
ground. Harvesting machines are used primarily in Brazil, where the
immense, flat terrain of the large fazendas (estates) allows the trees
to be planted in even, widely spaced rows.
If the fruit is on the ground, it must
be raked up and "winnowed" by workers who, using large meshed hoops,
fling the sweepings into the air several times; twigs, leaves, cherries
and dust are tossed up high, and the worker, like a juggler, catches the
cherries as the lighter weight materials are blown aside. A major
problem with the hand-stripping and machine methods of harvesting is
that many cherries are included which are not at a point of perfect
ripeness; these under or overripe cherries must be removed by extra
sorting or else they will lower the grading quality. All quality
arabicas will be sorted several times, beginning with hand-sorting the
cherries. This initial task of hand-sorting is often done by women and
children.
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