The Coffee Producer Toolkit #2: Processing

Welcome to the Coffee Producer Toolkit.

A podcast series built specifically for coffee farmers to help you run a more financially sustainable, better managed coffee farm.

I'm Lucia Solis.

I'm a fermentation and wine-making specialist working in coffee.

I live on a coffee farm, and I work directly with producers to improve their lots and their livelihoods.

My podcast, Making Coffee, explores the latest science and the future of coffee production.

And I'm James Hopper.

I'm a coffee journalist, creator of Filter Stories, a documentary podcast about the history, science, and the culture of coffee.

My thing, I like to go deep, understand why the industry works the way it does, and telling stories.

Across the series, we're covering topics that matter most to your bottom line: agronomy, post-harvest processing, this episode, coffee quality assessment, sales, marketing, and more.

And each episode will feature best practice from leading coffee farmers and experts and present it in a way that's practical and easy for you to act on.

This series is made possible by our partner sponsors, the Coffee Quest, Pinalense, Grain Pro, Novo Nesys, BWT, Deskamex, and InterAmerican.

It launches first in English, then there's the YouTube version, and they will have subtitles for all the major languages spoken by coffee producers.

And so whether you're a producer or you work with producers, or you're just curious about what it really takes to make coffee farming a viable business-

We think this is going to be useful, and if you're not a farmer, we think it might change how you see this industry entirely.

In the second episode, we are looking at post-harvest processing.

We're gonna start at cherry picking and selection, then we'll move to pulping, and specifically how water is being wasted in the most traditional setups.

Then we'll talk about drying, where the cheapest fixes are often the most effective.

And finally, we'll talk about the measurement tools that tie it all together.

We'll also touch on water sustainability, which is becoming impossible to ignore.

And Lucia, of course, fermentation is absent from this list.

It's really important, and it's right in the middle of all of these stages, but because it's too big of a topic, we are going to do its own episode on fermentation later in the series.

All right, let's get into it.