The Daily Sun Staff

About 400 people turned up on Saturday to partake in gathering coffee at Hacienda San Pedro in Jayuya, during the “Pick it up before it drops” campaign from Starbucks  to raise awareness among Puerto Ricans about the industry and those who come to the farms to collect coffee beans between September and December each year.

Roberto Atienza, 56, owner of the 360 acre farm, has lived in Jayuya for 36 years and is the third generation of a family who, since 1921, has succeeded in harvesting a coffee product that has already  become a national and internationally renowned product, with exports to places such as Japan. 

Atienza recognizes that the popularity of the U.S. coffee shop chain Starbucks has led to this event — now in its sixth year — which has attracted nonprofit organizations, government agencies, students and people interested in living, at least for one day, the work experience of gathering coffee, something that has not changed in years, because everything is still done, as always, by hand.

“You see, there is work on the farm,” said Domingo Luis Rivera, who has spent 25 years working on the farm. Rivera said that the work has not changed, because there is no other way to accomplish coffee picking, if not by hand.

“Puerto Rico’s coffee is being lost. And that is partly our responsibility. So we are helping with activities like this one, to resolve this situation to some extent. People think that work input is at ‘normal’ production, but this is a call to take action to reveal that in less than a decade we will not have coffee,” said Rivera.

According to Rivera, Puerto Rico has the ideal conditions for growing coffee and this is the reason why the company supports local production like Hacienda San Pedro.  “The saddest thing for this client is to not be able to offer Puerto Rican coffee,” said Rivera before adding that “many hands” are needed to maintain this industry.

“At least today (Saturday) many hands were seen at the ranch, where part of the land is used for conservation and as forest reserve,” explained Rivera.  It is in this area where they grow Arabica coffee plants in different varieties such as bale caturra, bourbon, Catuaí and “typica” 401 of Puerto Rico.

“The coffee that reaches the tables of many Puerto Ricans is this one, from workers who spent days collecting the beans,” explained  Atienza, who experiences 18-hour days on the farm and helps out nearly five hundred people to experience such hard work to collect a total of 803 pounds of the beans.