New machine offers relief for Colombian coffee-growers' labor woes - Reuters
Third generation Colombian coffee farmer Mauricio Giraldo knows all too well the stress of seeing some of his crop rot on the tree because he cannot find enough workers to pick the cherry-like red fruit.
Luisa Gonzalez
His 35-hectare (86-acre) farm in the southern mountains of Huila requires 80 pickers, but sometimes during busy harvest seasons he can find only half that, as people gravitate toward urban centers and away from arduous agricultural work.
Colombia, the world’s top producer of washed arabica coffee, lacks between 60,000 and 90,000 pickers overall, but a new machine invented by the coffee growers’ federation and Brazilian machinery company Brudden could cut that shortage in half.
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