Unripe cherry range through several shades of green; overripe cherry range from grayish-red or yellow to full black.
Farmers who harvest only ripe coffee cherry are practicing selective harvesting. This leads to higher-scoring lots of coffee, but it also means harvesting is more labour intensive.
A worker can selectively harvest 50–120 kilograms of coffee cherry per day.
Strip picking involves removing all the coffee cherry from the branch of a tree in one go.
A worker can typically strip pick 120–250 kilograms of coffee cherry per day.
A worker can harvest more quickly when each bough of the tree contains more uniformly ripe cherry;