Effect of rainfall during Coffee Harvest on Coffee beans Challenge of rainfall treatment Farm during Coffee Harvest

The rainfall in the harvest period represents the damage to the coffee.

Although rainfall is important for the high yield and growth of coffee, it is a negative threat to ripe coffee fruit, which is knocked to the ground, and fruit that falls to the ground for too long begins to ferment.

On the other hand, the fruit left on the branch may crack because it absorbs too much water too quickly, which will force the flesh of the mature fruit to separate, which will lead to the loss of fruit weight and the loss of pectin layer. and then reduce the quality of the finished coffee and the cup score.

In the activities of micro-batch coffee, we can see that when coffee fruits are classified according to maturity, the most ideal batch has the most ripe fruit, less overripe fruit and pink fruit, and no unripe fruit. If there is rain, we will harvest the pink fruit, because waiting for the fruit to turn red before the harvest will take a lot of risk.

Although the pink fruit will get lower cup test score and purchase price, waiting for the fruit to turn red before harvest will make farmers bear the lose-lose result of lower yield and lower quality.

Deal with the challenges faced by the farm

Rain can cause problems not only for the end of the farm, but also for the factories that deal with it. For coffee that has just been harvested and processed, it is okay for air humidity to cause a little more moisture, but it can have a serious impact on coffee whose moisture content has been treated to an appropriate range and which is ready to be bagged and exported.

Even when coffee is freshly harvested and placed on the shelf to dry, rain can have a negative effect. Wood is needed to separate different batches of coffee to avoid mixing, and then cover the raw beans.

If the rain comes quickly and quickly, it will cause great damage, even if it is kept in a sealed bag specially designed to fight Rain Water's moisture, especially when there are a large number of bags of raw beans. it is difficult to close all the bags before the moisture has a great impact.

Rain this is the peak period for the processing plant, and it is also the most difficult time to get through.

Financial impact of rainfall during harvest on producers

Rainfall is especially bad for coffee treated with sun or honey, and it is even worse if small farmers are short of manpower, insufficient resources and room for working capital.

Such rainfall will reduce the cup test score, and many buyers will only buy items of more than 84 cents. If the purchase price of commercial beans is knocked down from boutique to commercial beans because of the influence of Rain Water, there is a very big difference in farmers' income, especially small farmers are helpless, and they can only watch the quality of their coffee decline.

The influence of Rain Water on the next year's harvest

The harvest date of the next year will be advanced to August.

The author heard this sentence several times in the El Salvador producing area where the rain occurred. Due to the unexpected heavy rain, coffee flowers appear early on the branches, but coffee flowers have a lot to do with the development of the fruit. Although there are differences in varieties and producing areas, Arabica coffee usually ripens nine months after flowering.

As a result, the coffee harvested that year is very likely to be of low quality and low yield, and some farmers with lower incomes will want to receive payment early the next year. After all, farmers have no cash and will want to have an income before their livelihood is difficult.

However, as coffee from El Salvador competes with coffee that usually occurs at the same time (such as Peru, Brazil, Kenya), an early harvest can affect supply and demand. A decrease in demand and an increase in supply will lead to lower prices, so the month when farmers tighten their belts is likely to last longer.

Usually, early harvesting may also lead to the failure to find harvesting workers, because it is a seasonal job. However, as coffee leaf rust hit coffee production and quality in 2012, resulting in overwork of coffee bars, some local producers estimate that the number of harvesting workers is 25% more than the actual number of workers needed.