Brazil is known for its large farms, but nearly 60% of the arabica coffee produced in in the country is grown by smallholders.
Brazilian farms are characterised by technified, full-sun production. Coffee trees are planted at high densities, in widely spaced rows to allow harvesting machinery to pass between them.
Coffee in Brazil is mainly mechanically harvested or strip-picked. Brazil has high labour costs, flat terrain in coffee-growing regions, and uniform ripening thanks to predictable rainfall patterns — all factors that favour mechanical harvesting.
The mechanical coffee harvester was invented in Brazil in 1979 by Shunji Nishimura.
Certain cultivars, such as Mundo Novo, Yellow Caturra, and Catuaí,