A Tour Through South America

by A. S. Forrest

The red and green berries left behind are floated down another cemented channel to a machine which detaches the outer skins of the red berries, leaving the beans, which are now separated from the green berries, still intact, by a process of sifting in revolving perforated drums. These beans are now spread out upon the terrain, as are also the green berries, to be sun-dried in their turn.

The time occupied in the drying process depends, of course, upon the sun, the black fruit generally drying in from eight to ten days. The beans of the red fruit, known as washed coffee, take time to colour, and after three or four days are banked up, and covered from the rain, until they assume the washed coffee colour. The green berries, in their turn, take longer, generally about twenty days.

When thoroughly dried, the berries and beans alike pass into a series of chambers called the Machina de Beneficiar Café, where, by means of elaborate machinery, the berries are decorticated and the beans sorted in their various sizes. The husks and also the thin skins of the beans which are removed by winnowing are blown through a long tube to a heap outside, and preserved as manure, to be sprinkled between the trees and ploughed into the ground.

The beans, sorted into qualities of size and shape, are placed in sacks and sent by railway (which comes right alongside the Machina) down to Santos, the greatest shipping port for this product in the whole of Brazil.

The Martino Prado estate contributes about sixty thousand bags a year towards the annual output of over ten million bags which are exported from the State of São Paulo.

As the productive life of a coffee tree may be estimated at about forty years its cultivation is attended with much profit, and a law has been enacted by the State to prevent too many estates being brought into existence. Planting to replace dead or unfruitful trees is in no way restricted, the aim being to keep the production of the commodity from getting out of hand and to prevent the world’s markets being flooded with more coffee than is ordinarily consumed.

It was in 1906-1907 that the danger of over-production first attracted the serious attention of the “faziendieros,” who became alarmed at the prospect of a great lowering of prices. The season’s yield had been a record one, and threatened to cause a fall in price that meant ruin to many of the planters, and a serious crisis to the State of São Paulo, whose capital and resources were largely bound up in coffee culture. The Government had, in 1900, placed an almost prohibitive tax upon the creation of new plantations in order to check production and save the existing faziendieros from financial catastrophe, but were again faced with a perplexing situation, which resulted in the scheme of artificially upholding the price of coffee. With the assistance of the neighbouring States of Rio de Janeiro and Minas-Geraes, the São Paulo Government bought up the necessary number of sacks to relieve the market, and by preserving the balance between supply and demand kept the price at a figure remunerative to the planters. The credit to purchase the overplus was effected by the three States already named, and was guaranteed by an extra tax of one shilling and eightpence upon each sack of coffee exported from Santos or Rio. By means of loans from foreign banks the Governments were able to purchase and keep out of the market eight million sacks of coffee already stored in different parts of the world, and as coffee improves by age, the surplus thus bought up is being gradually disposed of at an enhanced price. This operation has been the subject of much controversy, many economists looking upon it as initiating a dangerous policy, whilst others claim that it has been amply justified by the good results that have followed to the State.

There can be no doubt that had the exceptional yield of 1906-1907 reached the market, a fall in prices, disastrous alike to the planters and to the State, would have resulted. The smaller crops of the succeeding years have favoured the release of the stored surplus without any lowering of prices, and the bold experiment has so far been successful.

THE PRADO MANSION HOUSE, SÃO PAULO.