Go to FNC, Colombia to watch coffee farmers sell coffee.

FNC has set up an institution in Almenia, which we call a "coffee shelling factory" in our curriculum, but it is a fully functional logistics center. There are many such institutions across Colombia that buy local parchment coffee, shell it according to export orders and ship it to two ports in the Pacific and Atlantic. Whether in the producing area or in the port, they are not simply responsible for moving goods. In this organization, there is a very complete quality supervision and quality control system. When parchment coffee is shipped here, it has to go through a very complex and strict quality classification, even after the unshelled raw coffee is shipped to the port, it still has to carry out quality inspection. Colombia's high-quality coffee is the highest degree of guarantee on such a logistics chain.

The facility in Almenia includes offices, warehouses and acquisition areas, a quality control office with micro-baking and CUPPING functions, and a large shelling plant.

On the day we visited the institution, we coincided with a beautiful wife who ran a 60-hectare coffee plantation and, like other coffee farmers, her work before becoming parchment coffee was done in her own coffee garden or with the help of a cooperative. They only need to ship 40 kilograms of parchment coffee here to complete the sale. That day she hired a van and brought 150 bags of parchment coffee. We can take a closer look at how FNC of Colombia buys coffee from coffee farmers.

The workers of the logistics company carried the parchment coffee one by one from the open van truck. At the door of the warehouse, a sampler holds a sampler with a long handle (called a "scout" in grain depots in northeast China). Skillfully and accurately pierce the coffee sack carried by the stevedores on their shoulders, and the whole sampling process is smooth and accurate. There is basically no pause in the middle. After the parchment coffee is sampled, it is poured into the plastic sample basin on the ground through the tail end of the sampler. The coffee owner stood by and quietly observed the whole process. About half an hour later, the sampling work was completed.

The samplers took a sample of the wife's coffee to the door of the quality grading office at the other end of the warehouse, and they took 2 kilograms of parchment coffee from the basin for inspection. First of all, the quality supervisors use the specific gravity method to evenly mix the 2 kilograms of parchment coffee and test the water content. The water content of the sample for the day is 11.9%. The moisture requirement for FNC to buy parchment coffee is 11.9%. These samples are shelled on the spot and placed on the sieve for classification. I asked ROY (a coffee expert) around me, "what's the effect of grading?" "the classification is very good, and the proportion of more than 18 mesh is very high," ROY said. The coffee owner was not disgusted by our onlookers, she just quietly followed the quality supervisor to observe how her coffee was identified. Finally, it was time to test the defective beans, and everyone followed the quality supervisor and the owner of the coffee into the room of the quality grading office. After weighing, the two chemists are skillfully selecting defective beans from coffee beans and classifying them according to the types of defective beans, then weighing different defective beans and calculating the proportion of these defective beans to the tested coffee. As there were too many onlookers, the small laboratory was extremely crowded, and the owner of the coffee was squeezed out of the crowd by us several times. Jiahang had to let us leave here first so as not to interfere with the effect of the test. Fellow beauty CEO Xiao Shi once suggested to me that if this wife's coffee is tested to be of high quality, we should all applaud her. It seems that the applause can only ring in our hearts.

When we came to the outer room of the quality laboratory, we looked around the warehouse where parchment coffee was packed in sacks and stacked neatly according to different producing areas, some as high as three stories high. I asked the person in charge of this organization, if a small coffee farmer sent only three bags of coffee, would you accept it? He replied, "FNC can't refuse to buy coffee from any coffee farmer, but buying us in too small quantities is the opposite of the current program." We have to shell the coffee before trial-roasting and CUPPING, and we need to know which flavor type and which producing area the coffee belongs to. Let's put the coffee aside and wait for the coffee with the same taste to come. If there is a large stock of parchment coffee with similar taste to this kind of coffee, we will classify it in that stack according to this procedure.

On the opposite side of the warehouse, at the other end of the yard, there is a row of bungalow-style buildings, where is the quality control office responsible for sample micro-baking and CUPPING. The coffee samples handed in by the lady were divided into three parts, one of which will be sent here for trial baking and CUPPING. I also asked the head of the organization, "do coffee farmers also participate in the CUPPING?" . He replied, "he can attend if he wants to. In other words, coffee farmers are involved in the process of coffee acquisition. " I asked how long the whole acquisition time was, including trial baking and CUPPING. He told me that this quantity like this would take more than two hours.

On the same day, the wife was still waiting for the results in the quality rating office of the purchase storeroom. The coffee we participated in CUPPING did not belong to this wife, but coffee from four different plantations from other coffee farmers. In the CUPPING room, we saw four PROBAT sample roasters in Germany, not only that, but at the FNC headquarters and other purchase sites we will see in the future, they all use this expensive PROBAT sample roaster. I also understand why PROBAT's Carola exhibitors from Germany to Bogota only show sample roasters (there is a demand).

(responsible Editor: coffee Sound)