What Are Manual and Mechanized Coffee Harvesting?
For many years, coffee has been harvested by hand—also known as manual harvesting—to ensure uniformity, high ripeness, and minimal damage. However, with technological advancements, the coffee industry has adopted a new method—mechanized harvesting. This approach uses modern equipment to shorten harvesting time and improve efficiency. In this article, let’s explore both manual and mechanized coffee harvesting to determine which method is better!
What Is Manual Coffee Harvesting?
Manual coffee harvesting involves handpicking coffee cherries. This method is divided into two types: selective picking and strip picking.
- Strip picking involves harvesting all the cherries on a branch at once, from the base to the tip. This method is commonly used in commercial coffee farms.
- Selective picking, on the other hand, requires more time and effort. It is primarily used in specialty coffee farms. Skilled and experienced pickers carefully select only the ripest cherries, avoiding defective ones. This process often requires multiple harvests to ensure the best quality. As a result, the coffee produced has a refined sweetness and a diverse, complex flavor profile.
What Is Mechanized Coffee Harvesting?
Mechanized coffee harvesting involves using vibrating and stripping equipment to collect coffee cherries. There are two main types of machines commonly used: derricaideiras and stripping machines.
- Derricadeiras are small, handheld devices shaped like a stick with a vibrating head designed like a hand. Farmers spread a tarp under the coffee trees and use the vibrating device to shake the cherries loose, which are then collected.
- Stripping machines are large vehicles equipped with rotating and vibrating rods that shake cherries off the branches. These machines are highly efficient, collecting coffee quickly and transferring the cherries into a container via a system of trays and tubes. However, stripping machines are generally only suitable for large, relatively flat plantations.
Differences Between Manual and Mechanized Coffee Harvesting
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages. The choice of harvesting method significantly impacts the quality and yield of the coffee.
1. Quality
Specialty coffee producers often prefer manual selective harvesting because it ensures uniform ripeness, balanced sugar content, and optimal flavor development after roasting. However, some countries believe that mechanized harvesting can still achieve good quality by sorting the cherries post-harvest using flotation methods, sorting machines, or manual selection.
2. Productivity
If coffee cherries remain on the tree for too long, they risk becoming overripe or damaged. Mechanized harvesting is more efficient in this regard, as it speeds up the process and reduces the labor required. However, it requires additional post-harvest processing to sort ripe cherries. In contrast, manual selective harvesting ensures quality from the start, reducing the need for extensive sorting later.
Which Is Better: Manual and Mechanized Coffee Harvesting?
High-end and specialty coffee require excellent flavor quality, which depends on uniform ripeness. Green or overripe cherries introduce undesirable flavors that can negatively affect the final product.
- Manual harvesting allows for precise selection of the best cherries, ensuring peak ripeness, consistency, and minimal defects such as unripe or damaged cherries.
- Mechanized harvesting can still yield high-quality coffee but demands more effort in post-harvest sorting and processing.
Both methods can produce high-quality coffee, depending on farm size, financial resources, labor availability, and intended use. Farmers must choose the most suitable approach based on these factors.
Purchase Hand-Harvested Coffee
In Vietnam, coffee is primarily harvested by hand to ensure high quality for both commercial and specialty coffee. Additionally, the country’s mountainous terrain is not well-suited for machine harvesting.
VCU is one of the largest coffee suppliers in the Central Highlands, offering a wide range of Robusta and Arabica varieties sourced from Vietnam’s renowned coffee-growing regions.
Some of our exported coffee products include Robusta Clean, Arabica Full-Washed Sơn La, and Robusta Clean Top Class…
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Source: Compiled Information
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