On a steep cliff in Guatemala, workers on a coffee farm hold a basket in front of them and carry a bag on their shoulders — all while holding a branch with one hand and using the other to pick off the beans.

This is only a small part of the process it takes to put coffee into students’ cups.

With a swipe of a card and a cup in hand, customers are carrying more than just their morning caffeine fix. Generations of Third World families have worked tediously and strenuously to provide coffee to people around the world.

The green bean

Before a coffee bean is roasted, it grows as a green-colored bean on an Arabica coffee tree, said Scot Casey, co-owner of The Black Drop Coffee House in downtown Bellingham.

Two traditional species of the coffee tree are cultivated for coffee houses — Arabica trees are used for espresso and Robusta trees are used for blending, he said.

The coffee tree grows at high altitudes in a tropical climate with rich soil. They can be found in Mexico, Central and South America, Asia, Brazil, Africa and the Middle East, according to the National Coffee Association.

Small fruits called coffee cherries grow on the trees. Inside, a green coffee bean grows until it is ripe enough to harvest, said Alexarc Mastema, owner of Maniac Roasting in Bellingham, which provides The Black Drop with its coffee.

When the coffee cherries are ripe, small farming families pick and harvest them, Casey said.

Bellingham resident Edwin Martinez owns one coffee farm in Guatemala and buys from 30 other coffee farms there. Martinez challenged the owner of Canlis Restaurant in Seattle to see how long it would take him to do the same work a coffee farmer does.

“I gave him a basket, and I said, ‘Lets start picking. Let’s see how long it takes you to get the cherries off this one tree,’” Martinez said.

Restaurant owner Mark Canlis took 20 minutes to pick the cherries, which Martinez said is a small fraction of the labor it takes to make one drop of coffee.

To make one pound of roasted coffee, it takes 4,000 hand-picked beans, according to the National Coffee Association.

“There is a human element at every point along the way [of coffee production],” Casey said.

At The Black Drop, Casey tells his employees that each bean must be handled with care. Casey jokes with new employees, insisting that for each spilt coffee bean, a letter must be written to each worker on the plantation it came from.

“It gives them a sense of ‘don’t waste it,’” Casey said. “Someone busted their ass to pick that one bean, and you just threw it on the ground.”

Drying processes   

After the beans are picked, they are sent to a mill to be cleaned. The mill washes the excess cherry pulp off the beans by sun drying them or using a machine to take the pulp off, Casey said.

Indian Monsoon Malabar, a blend sold occasionally at The Black Drop since it first opened 10 years ago, is notable for its drying process, Casey said. 

Instead of using machinery to dry the beans, workers open up their warehouse and let monsoon winds wash the beans, he said.

“When I taste it now, it tastes like India,” Casey said. “I imagine the Indian Shiva dancing in the cosmic circle with a cup of coffee, and that’s beautiful.”

Next, the beans are sent to an exporter within the region who distributes it to other countries, Casey said.

Exporting and importing    

Atlas Coffee Importers is just one of a handful of importers and distributors that Maniac Roasting uses, Casey said.

Casey and the other Black Drop Coffee House employees attend Coffee Fest, an annual event held every September in Seattle, to discuss upcoming blends with Atlas representatives.

Mastema talks to Atlas distributors every week to discuss what new kinds of coffee will become available from different countries.

Atlas Coffee Importers and other distributors provide information on the origin of the beans to the roasters.

Coffee is the second-highest sold commodity in the world behind oil, and Casey said sometimes the competitive coffee market sparks violence and thievery.

On Finca Vista Hermosa, Martinez’s Guatemalan farm, most farmers purchase cellphones to receive texts about coffee market prices to ensure they are not getting scammed when selling their beans to local buyers, Martinez said.

Mastema said until the mid ‘90s, he sometimes found bullet casings in imported coffee bags. He found bones and bullet casings in an Ethiopian blend once while working for a roasting company.

 During harvest seasons in Guatemala, Martinez hires armed guards to protect farmers’ paychecks when the checks are being transported to the farms.

“We’ve become very proactive, because [theft] is our biggest concern,” Martinez said.

Roasting

Although the beans may look clean, they must be roasted before they're sold to a coffee house to grind. 

At Maniac Roasting, Mastema roasts seven pounds of coffee at a time for approximately 15 minutes.

Once the beans go through the roaster, Mastema said he lets them dry and cool off before packaging them.

“He roasts with very intense care and concern over every batch,” Casey said. “It imparts a certain responsibility to The Black Drop to not waste it.”

Martinez is one of the two plantation owners that Maniac Roasting partners with.

Martinez works in Guatemala during the harvest seasons but has a family in Bellingham he comes back to, Casey said.

 The Black Drop said they appreciate that Maniac Roasting has a close relationship with Martinez, who oversees the harvesting process, Casey said.

Maniac Roasting also gets its beans from Daterras Coffee in Brazil.

“Daterra farms do hybrids of different Arabica plants to produce a sweeter or richer flavor,” Casey said. “Then they make recommendations on the roasting.”

Mastema said there are many distributors to choose from ­— from large farms with hundreds of trees, to single farmers with only a few trees. Mastema said he prefers to have direct contact with the farm to encourage them to produce quality coffee and get money to them faster.   

Tasting
   
After the beans are packaged, the roaster distributes them to coffee shops.    

Every new coffee brought into the Black Drop is tested, and employees make taste profiles to explain to customers what they are about to try.

“Last week, we received two Honduran blends and did a cupping  [a coffee-tasting technique] to try to tell the difference,” Casey said.

When performing a cupping, tasters pour coffee into several small cups to sample each blend. The fresh coffee forms a thin crust over the top.

“There is this beautiful moment when you break into the crust with a spoon,” Casey said. “It’s that moment that all the purest aroma of the coffee comes up.”

Once the roasted beans are ground up, the brewed coffee or espresso can be served to customers, Casey said.

“The most rewarding thing is when a person drinks a cup of coffee black and everything has been done right,” Martinez said. “If that happens, you’ve got true economic, environmental and social sustainability all the way back to the farm.”

A single bean passes through many hands and can travel thousands of miles before it finds its way into a sleepy customer’s morning “cup of joe.” What is considered a simple caffeine fix by some, is actually the result of years of labor by others.

The campus Starbucks is seemingly always packed, but baristas said the best time to come to avoid the line is 7:30 a.m.