Just Haiti growers use no chemicals or machines in any phase of coffee production and processing. They plant, weed, harvest and process the crop by hand.

 

They pick the coffee cherries (Creole seriz, French cerises) when they are fully red and ripe, and put the harvest into a water tank. The bad seriz float and are discarded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the floating, the growers thoroughly dry the good cherries on cement patios, producing what the Haitians call kafe an krok. In this state the coffee can be stored for several months.

 

For coffee that will not be stored, growers use a large mortar and pestle to knock off the pulp and remove the husk in a single step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then they manually sort and clean the husked, ready-to-roast green beans. For this they first use a circular mat made of palm leaves to remove bits of chaff and husk, then they spread the beans out and manually pick out the remaining bad beans. The green ready-to-roast beans are called kafe pile.

 

After Just Haiti established the revolving loan fund in 2009, the growers were able to finance the establishment of wet milling methods. This is making processing more efficient and should significantly increase the earning potential of the farmers’ labor.