Carissa Ayres

Have you ever been curious about where the coffee in your delicious 7 Brew Iced Blondie was from? How about the fan-favorite seasonal Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks? Like all food and drink we consume in our day-to-day lives, your favorite coffee doesn’t just appear out of thin air. Rather, those scrumptious coffee beans are planted, grown, propagated, picked, dried, packaged, and delivered around the world.
Christy Green, a Rolla High School math teacher and executive director of the nonprofit organization Missouri Sheep Producers, recently traveled to Kenya, where she got to observe agriculture in action. The outbound mission trip was run by the American Department of Agriculture (ADA). Their goal was to meet with goat and sheep farmers in Kenya to take a look at their operations, then develop a group of farmers that will come over to the United States sometime in summer or fall of 2026.
“In order to give us other agricultural aspects within the trip besides just looking at the sheep and goat farm [and] working the whole time, we went to tour the coffee farm and see the agricultural side of coffee in Kenya,” Green said.
Green got a firsthand view of how coffee beans are being grown and exported from a farm located near Nairobi, Kenya’s capital. The work of creating a product to sell is done completely by hand.
“This is not done by machines. I think, in the United States, we take a lot for granted. We think everything’s just given to us and it’s a finished product. No, there’s a lot that goes into it, and a lot of manpower and hard, hard hours,” Green said.
In the farm, coffee beans are picked by hand and laid on drying tables outside. By placing them under the sun, they become vulnerable to weather episodes. The time spent upon growing this product is what drives its value. When weather causes a large loss of product, the price inflates.
“We get upset when the [coffee] prices go up, but we don’t think about what has happened that has caused that price to go up. Was there a major catastrophe weather-wise, environmentally, or whatever [factors] that have caused a shortage in the product?” Green said.
Green stressed the importance of appreciation for our daily intakes of coffee and easily-accessible amenities.
“We take for granted that it’s in a cup and it’s already liquid … The biggest [misconception] is the amount of actual human touch that goes into this product … from the plants all the way to where they’re picking [the beans] at the end. They’re drying it and they’re bagging it. That’s all done by hand,” Green said.
The work that goes into exporting coffee beans is unbeknownst to the average coffee drinker. According to the National Coffee Association, the number of American adults who have had coffee in the past day has jumped to 67%, an increase of 37% since 2004, putting single-day coffee consumption at its highest level in more than 20 years. Understanding the story behind a daily coffee beverage can enrich the drinking experience, elevating it to a connected appreciation of an intricate product.
“It was very unique, and I’m going to use the word ‘humbling,’ to see how they are [farming]. You know, I think we take for granted that something is put in front of us [as] a finished product,” Green said.