Puerto Rican Gourmet Coffee Beans Go Unharvested.

Premium Gourmet Coffee beans from Puerto Rico go to waste because Puerto Rican coffee growers can’t find enough workers to harvest the beans, according to Julio Torres, executive vice president of Grupo Jimenez, the island nation’s leading producer. Jimenez is dismayed by the lack of willing harvest workers in a country with average 12 percent unemployment rate.

Jimenez is seeking government help to import cheap labor from Mexico and Guatemala and house them for the harvest season, while planning to use minimum security prisoners to harvest premium quality coffee beans this September.

The sometimes rugged terrain where coffee is grown requires laborers carrying heavy crates to stand on steep, rocky inclines while swarming insects bite them eight hours a day – not a dream job description.

As a United States Territory, Puerto Rico requires that workers are paid minimum wage. Coffee growers in other countries use underpaid migrant workers or desperate impoverished locals to do the dirty work of harvesting gourmet coffee beans. Premium coffee beans grow best in high mountainside crops requiring more stamina and strength of harvesters than that required of typical farmland produce laborers in wide fertile valleys.