OUR ORIGINS

 PitaCoffee was formed to assist a few coffee farmers at a time in the area of Pitalito, Huila, Colombia, to upgrade and develop better practices in their labor towards harvesting and handling of their product which is green coffee beans. We have invested in this program not only to develop good practices in the coffee production but also to ensure the added profit value of the coffee stays within the farm.

We have selected 18 farms of the region to work with, developing a close relationships with them and teaching them that coffee, being a food product has to be treated with the highest quality standards of processing so that at the end we not only have clean coffee beans but the best tasting coffee possible for the world market of special coffees.  For this very purpose we have hired a team of consultants to assist us in this endeavor, the best in the area, of which we will be showing the whole process and its results.

We have found out that the standard practice among most of the farmers is to wait till most of the coffee trees are in the ripen state and all in a short period of time, hire workers to strip the beans whether partially ripe to even over ripe in one pass and have them all milled to remove the flesh of the raw coffee cherries to be fermented.  Then the beans are taken to their drying place to dry for a few days before bagging them to be sold to the Coffee Federation or to large international coffee companies. This will result in basically selling them at the lowest going price on the market.

The coffee buyers whether coffee companies or the Federation will take the coffee beans and threshed them to remove the parchment and select out the good green beans from the bad, to sell the good green beans at an increase profit for themselves and the bad will be sold for instant coffee, decaffeinated coffee or for commercial purposes, which is called "pasilla".  This is the normal current system of the coffee market.

By influencing the local coffee farmers to improve their standards in managing the picking of the cherries, selecting out the best cherries (the richest ripe cherries) as they become ripe (weekly) to be milled, fermented, dried to 10 -12% moisture, and bagged for threshing all within certain guidelines will result in the best green bean possible.  Also by teaching the farmers about the quality of their product that will be highly marketable and will ensure an ongoing sustainable production and more earnings to the grower; consequently they will better their livelihood and way of living for themselves and the workers in their employment.
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