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Coffee harvesting is labor intensive and seasonal. Farms with trees producing coffee cherries at various stages of maturation use a method of harvesting called selective picking. Selective picking calls for pickers to walk with baskets or bags slung over their shoulders or hips allowing both hands to remain free to pick only the ripe cherries from individual branches as they walk among the trees. During the harvest season, selective picking occurs every 8 to 10 days. A picker can harvest between 100 to 200 pounds of cherries per day. Due to dehydration only 20% of this harvested weight results in actual green bean weight.

Factoid: One Arabica coffee tree annually yields about 1 to 1 1/2 pounds of roasted coffee.

In areas with a highly defined seasonal rainfall and subsequent simultaneous ripening of all the trees' fruits, a method called strip picking is used to harvest. With this method, a tarp is placed on the ground beneath the coffee tree to catch the cherries as a picker grabs each branch at the base and pulls everything off towards the tip. This requires a further step of sifting the cherries from the other debris stripped off the branches.

Mechanical harvesting exists in limited regions. It is similar to the method used in orchards to shake nuts and fruit from the branches of almond and orange trees. Because this requires fairly flat terrain and long, even rows of trees to be effective, its practice is limited primarily to regions in Brazil at this time.

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