Burka employs both casual field hands and a permanent staff who farm the estates. A significant part of Burka’s success depends on the knowledge and expertise of our farm workers. The quality of the crop lies in their hands, as they are in charge of weeding, pruning, herbicide and fertilizer application, insect scouting and cutting back grass. Burka Coffee Estates has approximately 500 employees engaged in day-to-day coffee cultivation, of which a large majority resides within the company’s estates and receives free housing. All full-time employees are registered with the National Social Security Pension Fund and have free access to medical services, on-site childcare and other facilities and benefit from a secure and supportive work environment.
Field Workers
Coffee is hand made
A day at Burka during harvest time can see up to 3,000 local field hands on the estate. They share with the full-time farm workers the immense task of selecting and hand-picking the mature and ripe cherries which is so essential to ensuring a high-quality crop.
The success of a harvest depends to a considerable degree on the labour of these field workers, whose main focus is on separating the ripe from the immature berries. Homogeneous ripeness is crucial to cupping quality, and our dedicated farmers and field workers hand-sort and process each cherry separately so as not to compromise our coffee quality. Harvesting can go on for over 140 days and involves bringing in the crop from approximately 1.2 million coffee trees.
