Photo Gallery: Where Does Your Coffee Come From?

By: Laura Stump

For as much as I love my morning cup of coffee, I know very little about what it takes for it to get from the plant to my cup. But thanks to the people of Café Justo, I’m seeing the whole process!

Café Justo is dedicated to providing a fair price to coffee growers so they can live and work in their home communities, send their children to school, have health insurance and live comfortably.

The cooperative includes growers and roasters, allowing Café Justo to capture all the revenue from the production and sale of the final product. The coffee comes from four different cooperatives throughout Mexico to Agua Prieta, where it’s processed and exported.

Follow coffee from Salvador Urbina, Chiapas all the way to the United States!

Coffee plants require several months in a protected environment before being transplanted to the fields.

Some of the coffee is located on steep hills. Coffee farmers walk these roads carrying bags of coffee beans during the harvest!

The fields are located in damp, high altitude climates like Salvador Urbina. Instead of clearing the land, the producers here grow coffee plants alongside other native foliage.

After three years, a plant will start producing these beans. They turn red close to harvest time.

Café Justo grows coffee organically, meaning they manage agricultural pests with techniques that don’t involve applying synthetic pesticides to the plants.

After harvest, some farmers choose to dry their beans in the sun, but many bring them to the Café Justo bodega to use this dryer.

Dried beans go through various steps of sorting and removing the bean husk.

They eventually are “classified” by size in this machine.

Some coffee growers (part of Café Justo and independent) choose to roast coffee here in Urbina for use or sale.

The coffee comes out of the roaster very hot and must cool before moving to the next step.

Nepha is running roasted coffee through the bodega’s grinder.

However, most of the coffee here in Urbina stops at this stage.

Some of the coffee is ground. Marcelo weighs and packages the coffee by type and passes it on to the shipping staff, who organize it for export.

The coffee inspected at customs and crossed over the border to the U.S. where consumers purchase it directly or volunteer to help sell it in their communities. Each bag is stamped with the name of the coffee grower so people know exactly who their purchase supports.

For more info visit: www.worldnextdoor.org