Nathaniel Goes South: Nitty Gritty Coffee

With the family

Manuel and Martha are the heads of the host family with which I am staying. They appear typical of the area. Their extended families are deeply entrenched in the area with cousins, parents and siblings living on all sides. They have six children, making their family a little small compared to those of their parent's generation, but I think pretty normal for theirs. They own three small plots of land which were acquired through a mix of parental gifts and purchasing. Before receiving any land, Manuel worked in Spain for seven years, moving with the harvest and coming home for a month or two at a time. A strange number of people in the community seem to have done this in fact. And like many of them Manuel saved enough money from his time abroad to build a house in the center of town. And also like many of people who left, he came back to work the coffee farms that grow all around town.

Picking coffee

The plots they own have mainly old plants, some as old as 15 or 20 years old which produce less fruit than they used to . This I believe is due to the fact that they inherited much of what they now cultivate from aging parents who may not have taken as much care as they as Manuel now plans to with the land. He is planting at least three varieties of coffee: Arabica Tipica being the most plentiful, Colombia 6 which produces plentifully, but only for three years, and something which sounded like “Chakchimoro” which will be the primary cultivar in the coming years. Although I have spent only a few days working with Manuel harvesting coffee beans, we have almost picked all of his plants clean, leaving him with only about 100lbs of dried coffee. Due to some sort of plague as they call it here the harvest has been drastically decreasing for the past two years. For reference, Procairo, the grower's association Manuel is a part of sold around 400 quintales of roasted coffee in 2011, in 2012 however that number was around 125, and this year they think it will not reach more than 70. But even without this dramatic plummeting of local coffee production, it is hard to make a living growing coffee.

The morning's haul

The process itself is not easy. Although the plants do not need intensive care, the organic processes used here require a good deal of composting, weed and pest control throughout the year. The harvest season is about 3 months from June to August, and because not every coffee cherry comes ripe at the same time, the grower must return multiple times to the same plot to harvest all of his/her fruit. Coffee in the area grows on steep slopes, though I didn't measure it, I would say that the average slope I harvested on was more than 15 degrees and often much more, making it very hard to remain balanced, and definitely putting a strain on the leg muscles. Once the red cherries are harvested the coffee is ready for processing. Though some people simply dry the cherries at this point, Manuel and his fellow association members de-pulp the coffee removing the fruit and skin so that it dries faster. This process uses a specialized mill that does not damage the inner bean which is after all what they are after, and garners a better price in the open market.

De-pulping while the family watches

The local coffee market has two main branches. The first, more conventional branch, is that controlled by local store owners who buy at much lower prices and then sell their coffee to other middle-men or processors in bigger towns. At the moment the prices of a dried pound of de-pulped coffee is $1.70, and of non-de-pulped coffee is only $1. The stores offer local growers the benefit of being able to sell their coffee at any time, effectively making dried coffee a fungible currency. In town however there is also another branch of the coffee market which is the independent cooperatively controlled Procairo association. Procairo seeks better markets for the region's coffee and is required to pass on a larger portion of the earnings. Procairo buys coffee from its members at $2.40 / lb, making it a much better source of income for its members than selling to the local stores. However, because of the nature of the association it can only buy during the harvest season, and then only once a week.

Washing the de-pulped beans

Manuel, in a very good year his three plots of land can produce 8 quintals of coffee which is 800 lbs. This means that all he can hope to earn from his land is $1920 at the current price of coffee. Though the cost of life in Ecuador is low, it is hardly possible to live on $2000, especially with a family of 8, whose average monthly expenses they estimate are $450. Manuel's family situation appears to be typical of association members none of whom produce large quantities. After all, there were about 100 member families in 2011 when around 400 quintals were bought by the association, meaning that the average family plot produced 400 lbs of dried coffee. Indeed without other sources of income it is impossible to see how a family can exist. I think this should be startling news.