Selective Harvesting
Selective harvesting is the process of picking only the ripe coffee fruit by hand. Pickers spend the day filling their baskets and periodically emptying them into larger collection bags. The unripe coffee is left unpicked for future harvesting. Overripe fruit can be picked and kept separate from the ripe fruit or left on the tree. At the end of the day, the coffee is taken to be sorted and weighed. Payment is allocated by weight. This process is repeated every few weeks until the region is no longer considered worthwhile to harvest. Selective harvesting is the method utilized by a majority of specialty coffeemakers. Specialty coffee includes all coffees that score an 80 or above on the SCAA scale.
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Strip Harvesting
Strip harvesting is the process of harvesting the entire crop at once when the crop is at its optimal level of maturation. This process can be done manually or mechanically.
Mechanical Harvesters: Mechanical harvesters are large machines that use rotating and vibrating mallets to knock the fruit off the tree into collection units. By adjusting the speed, rotation and vibration rates you can minimize the number of unripes collected. This type of harvesting requires a coffee region with a flat topography. |
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Zero Harvesting
Zero harvesting is the process by which a producer prunes or cuts the branches of a coffee tree completely back to the trunk. After a year of regeneration with no harvest, the following year will result in a particularly productive harvest, yielding larger amounts of coffee. This process can be repeated for as long as the grower chooses. Through this process less energy is exuded in the transport of the nutrients and more is used to produce the fruit/the seeds.
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Disadvantages of Zero Harvesting
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Written By: Brittanie Burke, Photos By: Joel Shuler