Some producers started harvesting 2021 coffee crop in mid-April, Sebastião das Graças Galdino, in the Penereiro district, is one of them. He and his children have their homes and crops all close together and during this time they get together to harvest the each other’s crops.
The whole family does the work manually. In the first week, the harvest began at the 4,000-tress-Mundo-Novo-coffee plot that belongs to Mr. Sebastião. There were 7 people working. “This year there is little coffee and the drought in January left cherries a bit small, so it won’t yield much and the profit will be lower,” he says. In addition to being a low-harvest year, the producer and his children also have many coffee plants that were pruned, as part of the zero-harvest program, which will only return to production in 2022.
In the coffee drying yard, Mr. Sebastião’s son, Jair Galdino, was already doing the work of moving beans with his motorcycle, which is actually a tricycle. Since 2015 the family has retired the hand work and mechanized this chore. Jair also takes care of the dryer and coffee-milling machine. “By the end of June or beginning of July, we’ll have already finished all the coffee harvesting and milling”, he believes.
Another cooperative member, Rogério Gonçalves Mendes, also began harvesting in April, at Vagalume Farm, in the neighborhood of the same name, in the town of Fama. This year, as the crop is much smaller, he is doing all the work himself. He said that still in May coffee harvesting and drying should be done. “I hope we’ll only have a good harvest next year. Until then, we will balance and take care of the crop”, he said.
COOMAP is ready to receive coffee
COOMAP has already got entire structure ready to receive coffee from this harvest, both in the warehouses where coffee is deposited, and at the quality sector, where samples of incoming lots are analyzed and classified. Some small lots were received at the warehouse at the end of April, but production really gets going in mid-May, when most producers have already started harvesting.
1st 2021 Crop Harvest Forecast – Conab
Report published in the COOMAP News Newsletter, issue 37. See the full article by clicking here.
