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him/herself. Just like in wine, when we talk about chateaux (from the vine-
yard to the bottle, all in the property). In coffee, we would say Estate coffees.
But a producer could only be, as well, just a producer. In some countries like
Mexico, most of the producers do the wet milling, as they sell coffee on
parchment. In some others, they would choose to sell the coffees in cherries,
and not do the wet milling, just like in El Salvador. In both cases, they do it
in this way, because it has been done like that traditionally. Probably they
won’t do the dry milling, as the investments are considerably higher than
that of building a wet mill.But what would be the path they would follow to
commercialize their coffees?
4 The Exporter

As cooperative
Either, they decide to associate in a cooperative, and sell their
parchments/cherries to the cooperative. It would be the coop-
erative, which would be in charge of doing the dry mill and export
the green coffee. There are of course, some exceptions, like in Colombia,
where plenty of cooperatives ended up by selling to exporters. How could
this be possible? Well, it is most of the time, for technical reasons, like the
future sales, as they sometimes don’t like to handle it as it would require a
stronger financial division.
As simple exporter
On the other side, they might decide to sell their coffee to an
exporter, and in this case, they won’t be affiliated to the exporter,
and would do just punctual or long term (it might depend on their
relation) sales to him. As in the case of the cooperative, the exporter would
be the person in charge of deciding how they would sell the coffees of the
farmer (as a bulk or as a differentiate coffee, an Estate, microlot, etc).
As producer
There is also a new way of functioning, that we see more these days,
and it is the producer, who uses the services of a wet/dry miller &
exporter, just as a third service, and reaches him/herself the final
buyer. This is, of course, in complete accordance with what the specialty coffee
sector is & represents, creating long term business relationships.

3 The Dry Miller

The dry miller has the capacity
of hulling the parchment/dried cher-
ry, in order to obtain a green coffee able
to be exported. Dry millers can process
parchment, but normally they can have
the capacity of also processing cherries
by the natural process. A dry miller, has
normally the capacity of bagging and
exporting the green coffee, which
means that they are licensed exporters
in their country. Some countries can be
exceptions, like Kenya, where dry mill-
ers are not exporters.So far, so clear.
Like the Waters, from Roger.
Now:A producer, can be a miller
(wet & dry), and an exporter. Do all by

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