What is the cherry to green ratio?

The cherry to green ratio tells you how much fresh coffee cherry is needed to produce one kilogram of exportable green coffee. For washed coffees, a typical ratio is around 5:1 to 6:1 by weight.

It's a key efficiency metric at origin. A ratio near the lower end suggests good cherry quality and well-managed processing; a significantly higher ratio often indicates underripe or overripe cherry, processing losses, or high defect rates requiring more sorting. Producers use it to translate picking-day targets directly into export volume projections.

For buyers, it provides context for the economics of premium lots. The labour and cherry volume required to produce a single bag of a well-sorted, low-defect specialty micro-lot is genuinely significant - understanding the ratio helps explain why exceptional lots command the prices they do.