Parlin New Jersey, August 15, 2005
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. Jiminez is dismayed by the lack
of willing harvest workers in a country with average 12 percent
unemployment rate. He lamented in a New York Times article just
two weeks ago on July 31, "Maybe they can train monkees to do
it."
Jiminez 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 larborers in wide fertile valleys.
Puerto Rico, population
of 3.9 million, consumes most of the coffee produced in the small
island nation and even imports some to satisfy their own coffee
consumption habits. Those countries that are able to import the
rare Puerto Rican beans pay slightly more for them than for other
gourmet coffees. These gourmet
coffees from Puerto Rico have been rated by gourmet coffee
taster, Ken Davids of www.CoffeeReview.com as "full bodied, roundly
sweet, with low but vibrant acidity."
This gourmet coffee bean compares
favorably with another recognized premium quality Caribbean coffee,
Jamaica
Blue Mountain Coffee blend, but the Puerto Rican beans are
available at almost half the price of Jamaican beans. Jamaican
coffee is revered in Japan that 90% of the Jamaican crop is immediately
exported there, leaving the remainder to gourmet coffee lovers
who pay over $30 per pound. Puerto Rican Yauco Selecto and Café
Tres Picachos blends are available for between $20 and $25 per
pound.
Fans of Puerto Rican
Premium Gourmet Coffees can visit the Coffee Talk Forum at <http://www.tastesoftheworld.net/talk/>
to discuss the Caribbean gourmet coffee and compare it to Jamaica
Blue Mountain Coffee from Jablum, available at http://TastesOfTheWorld.net
as is the most expensive coffee in the world, the exotic
Kopi Luwak coffee, from Indonesia.
About Tastes of The World Tastes of The World coffee company focuses on specialty gourmet coffee not readily available in the US. Rare Gourmet coffee is their business so they make shopping with them risk free. "If you are happy tell a friend if you are not tell us"
http://www.tastesoftheworld.net/puerto-rico-coffee-prices.htm E-mail CustomerService@tastesoftheworld.net 1-877-895-2662
