COLOMBIA YACUANQUER-Washed-Filter

In the discourse of coffee, there are often less-sexy details that don’t get the shine that fancy processing, exciting new varietals, or experimental farmers do. One of these is the difficulties of standardizing and protecting labor due to the nature of seasonal work surrounding harvesting. 

Harvesting coffee is a laborious process; the diligent work of picking through thousands and thousands of cherries to pluck only the most ripe, from tree to tree until you’ve finished a long day of work. The timing of your hire is dependent on the readiness of a farmer to initiate harvest. The informality and instability of this work creates an environment in which formal hire and employment is a gargantuan task. Because of this, there is a cyclical element of disincentivizing reliable labor and professional expertise, and it only makes sense.