i Patrick W. Staib Anthropology This dissertation is approved, and it ...

Coffee pickers bring their coffee to the beneficio húmedo (wet mill) at the end of
the day for counting and depulping. Bismarck or Eliazar keeps count of how many latas
each worker picked. The farmer pays the workers each Saturday for the total number of
latas picked that week. The farmer depulps the coffee cherries that have been picked that
day every afternoon during the harvest season. The depulping machine, some cranked by
hand and others mechanized, scrapes the pulp from the grano (seed). The seeds are
allowed to ferment overnight, for about 14–16 hours, until their mucilaginous coating
becomes gluey and the granos stick together. Someone plunges a stick into the pile of
fermenting coffee and then removes it; the coffee is ready when the hole made by the
stick remains intact. After fermentation is complete, the farmers pour fresh water over the
coffee and let it run down a long, narrow canal. The canal is dammed at the end to retain
the coffee but release the water. Undesirable coffee floats to the top and runs off with the
rinse. The good, exportable coffee sinks. The coffee is sufficiently rinsed when it makes a
scratching sound, like fine sandpaper, when rubbed together.
Farmers take a loss in productive yield when they produce organically. An input-
heavy conventional coffee operation will typically yield between 25 to 35 quintals of café
oro exportable (green exportable coffee) per manzana. An organic coffee operation, with
wholesale investment in organic fertilizers, shade regulation, and manual pest and illness
control, will yield between 10 and 15 quintals of café oro exportable. There is no
standard rate for converting yields of harvested coffee cherries to processed café oro
(green coffee). According to my data on Las Grietas farms, the ratio of harvest cherries to
oro varied from 5:1 to 3:1 depending on bean size and density as well as the amount of
damage from broca (coffee borer) or plant illness. On Danilo’s farm, for example, in a
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