Coffee bean rain is needed in the beginning of the season when the fruit is developing and less later in the season as it ripens. When the fruit is ripe, it is almost always handpicked, using either "selective picking", where only the ripe fruit is removed, or "strip-picking", where all of the fruit is removed from a limb all at once. This selective picking gives the growers reason to give their coffee a certain specification called "operation cherry red" (OCR). In rare circumstances, the Asian palm civet eats coffee berries and excretes the beans. These beans are called "kopi luwak", and can
Coffee 2013, "The Seattle Times" reported that global coffee prices dropped more than 50 percent year-over-year. The downward trend continued, and in September 2018 coffee futures dropped to a 12-year low, below the cost of production for many farmers in mountainous regions who cannot use mechanized harvesting methods. In Thailand, black ivory coffee beans are fed to elephants whose digestive enzymes reduce the bitter taste of beans collected from dung. These beans sell for up to $1,100 a kilogram ($500 per lb), achieving the world's most expensive coffee some three times costlier than beans harvested from the dung of Asian palm