EMPOWERING LABOR: GROWERS AND WORKERS

Last month’s Outlook – Concentration of coffee production: a macro view on why and how to revert it – raised the question of why other countries whose percentages of the FOB price received by growers are close to those of Vietnam and Brazil are not increasing their production and gaining market share. One reason is lower productivity but this may result from local conditions, e. g. shaded coffee, that is seldomly handled agronomically in a way to maximize productivity. Another more fundamental reason may be the lower productivity of labor caused by the lack of use of technology that empowers labor, be it the labor of growers themselves or that of workers. Low labor productivity results in insufficient income for growers and unattractive wages for workers that may lead to abandoning coffee production and/or seeking work elsewhere, immigration being an option in some countries.

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In a visit of foreign coffee growers to Brazil last harvesting season, I was myself impressed by what I witnessed in our visit to a 2-hectare smallholder coffee grower in a steep area of South Minas Gerais. With the recourse to terraces, the family used a small tractor to help remove weeds and spray agrochemicals and to transport the coffee harvested with hand-held harvesting machines. Their efficiency was such that they were actually leasing and running another 3 hectares of coffee and making more money in response to the use of technology and economies of scale. This example shows how technology can also help address the small size of farms that predominate around the coffee producing world.

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How can coffee growers survive relying on manual cultivation and harvesting techniques when the cost of living and aspirations grow? The ability to manually perform these tasks has remained the same for decades while growers’ and workers’ demands for income have increased year after year to meet costs of living let alone their children’s aspirations.

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Considering that the most important component of coffee production costs is harvesting and that in most countries this is primarily the cost of labor to pick coffee manually, the single most important item to address to empower labor is harvesting. This empowerment can start even without mechanization, by moving from manual selective harvesting of ripe cherries to stripping the branches or the parts of them where most cherries are ripe. This operational change can increase the volume of coffee harvested at least twice. Why is it not widely done? Most often because of the argument that unripe cherries have lower quality and sell for a lower price. However it will probably be the case that the savings in harvesting costs will more than offset the losses in the sale of coffee and the coffee grower will be better off!

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The next step is to use the hand-held mechanical harvesters that in most areas do not require terracing. The increase in volume harvested may be up to five times in relation to selective manual harvesting depending on how selective one wants to be. The surprising fact is that with the use of these machines the percentage of unripe cherries may not be much higher than what is found today with “selective” harvesting… probably because pickers are not selective enough in order to make more money. The cost of the equipment is not high and may be paid for with the gain in harvesting productivity in two or three harvesting months in Brazilian conditions.

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Two arguments that are often raised against the changes in harvesting proposed in the last two paragraphs – use of manual and mechanical stripping – are the ability of the plant to retain production in the following crop and what to do with the unripe cherries. The fear that the crop will fall is associated with the removal of flower buds or flowers during stripping. This can be avoided or minimized by “selective stripping”, i. e., stripping the parts of the branches where there are no buds or flowers. Unripe cherries can be separated by pressure in modern wet milling equipment and even pulped to improve their quality. There is certainly a market for them in the countries where they are produced in order to cater for low-income coffee consumers who are in some countries drinking imported coffee with these same features.

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Considering all the arguments above, it comes to no surprise that the recent living income study carried out by the Global Coffee Platform in Brazil showed that smallholder growers increase their income by providing services to other growers and/or having urban jobs. The reason for this is most probably higher labor efficiency leveraged by equipment/technology that allows them to have time (and equipment) to provide services to others or to work part-time in towns. Since Brazilian coffee farms employ many workers, it comes to no surprise either that mechanical hand-held harvesters have created a “social revolution” in the countryside with labor making more money and growers as well.

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What prevents this from happening outside Brazil? Is it practical tangible limitations, the lack of trials coupled with cost-benefit calculations, or intangible barriers created for several reasons?

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The way how labor can be further empowered by the use of terraces and how cooperatives, associations and extension services can support these changes, harvesting efficiency included, will be addressed in another Outlook.

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