Puerto Rico coffee growers not picky

Industry turns to jails to ease labor shortage

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — In an effort to stem severe crop losses and jump-start its coffee industry, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has turned to welfare recipients and prison inmates to harvest this year’s coffee beans.

The program is part of an initiative to restore Puerto Rico’s struggling coffee industry to its grandeur before neglect, bad weather and labor shortages of the early 19th Century caused the island’s brews to fall out of favor across Europe, including at the Vatican.

“There’s a serious shortage of coffee pickers and we have to act quickly,” said Jose Fabre, secretary of Puerto Rico’s Agriculture Department, which launched the initiative as part of coffee industry measures supported by Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila.

“We are trying to get this industry on a sound footing,” Fabre said. “We need laborers willing to work in some difficult terrain to earn money.”

Owners of haciendas, or plantations, in this U.S. commonwealth have relied on municipal jails for decades to recruit workers during coffee harvest season, which runs September to January. This new program formalizes those past arrangements.

Dozens of armed guards keep a close watch on the prisoners as they pick.

Last month,inmate Juan Rivera Cabrerea, 21, who is serving a 2-year sentence on a drug charge, said being alone on a mountain top with his thoughts while harvesting coffee beans had opened his mind to a world of possibilities.

“I’ll make some money so when I get out of jail, I won’t be broke,” he said, smiling. “Who knows, maybe I will pick coffee as a job.”

The program, launched in mid-November, is a good deal for welfare recipients, government officials said, because they can earn extra money without losing their benefits. And for offenders who are deemed non-violent, picking coffee beans may help reduce their sentences and will generate funds they can tap upon release.

If the program goes well, Fabre said, other coffee-producing nations such as Jamaica might turn to this plan to boost the sagging Caribbean coffee industry.

Many of the island’s 10,000 coffee farms have struggled for years to find laborers. Last year, 40 percent of Puerto Rico’s crop was lost. It was left in the fields because hacienda owners could not find enough workers to harvest the crop.

“This a not a perfect solution,” said Jose Rocha, a former New York City grocer who bought a 3,000-acre coffee plantation high in the island’s rugged Cordillera Central mountains in the 1980s.

“A skilled coffee picker can harvest five to 10 times more coffee than an inexperienced one. But right now we need all the hands we can get.”

Maria Eugena Beck, an agronomist with the Puerto Rican government and coordinator of the new initiative, said about 500 male and female inmates were recruited. About 1,000 welfare recipients have also signed up.

But next year if all goes well, she explained, the number of prisoners and public aid recipients may double. The island could use up to 7,000 laborers working throughout 21 coffee-producing communities in the mountains to ensure a minimum of crop losses.

Laborers are paid $4.25 for every 5-gallon bucket of coffee beans. Each full bucket weighs 28 pounds and produces about 5 pounds of dried ground coffee. A skilled coffee picker can harvest 15 to 20 containers of beans per day.

These first-year recruits, most of whom will work from 6 a.m. to noon, are expected to harvest only three to five containers per day, Eugena Beck said.

Much of the 22.5 million pounds of coffee harvested on the island is consumed here. But hacienda owners formed large cooperatives last year to share resources and boost production for markets in the U.S. and Europe.

On the island’s 2,500-feet high mountains, crews of prisoners stood on steep mountain ledges and other rock formations for leverage as they picked beans.

“This beats sitting in a jail cell all day long,” said Ibis Marrero, 30, who has served one year of a 3-year sentence for car theft.

“I learned my lesson–I don’t want to be in jail any more,” she said. “Thank God there’s something to get me out!”

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rquintanilla@tribune.com