Estate Grown vs Micro or Small Lot farms, What’s the Difference?

In an earlier blog post I covered a very brief overview of single origin beans because it has become very front and centre in today’s conversations about ethically sourced beans.  However, there is a version 2.0 to this because single origin is only part of the story, where the bean was grown whether on an estate lot, micro or macro and small lot farm is what we are here to discuss today.

Let’s keep it simple.

Estate lot – Generally grown on one MASSIVE farm, which might range in size from a few acres to a large plantation occupying many square kilometres/miles or a collection of farms which all process their coffee at the same mill.  This is generally the cheapest and most common way to produce coffee because of the size and yield costs are generally lower and ultimately the sale price is lower.

Micro lot – Sometimes referred to as “small lot” or “nano lot” this type of bean is sourced from a single plot of land in a farm, sometimes by a single farmer or small group.  When coffee is harvested and processed on such small scale generally the yield is around a few hundred pounds, but the beans are sorted and processed in a more meticulous fashion.  Due to this type of process the costs increase and so the sale price also has to rise to cover these.

In today’s coffee drinking market, there are 2 types of buyers, those that buy whatever is on sale at the grocery store and those that pay a slight premium for a better-quality bean.  There exists a need for both and neither one is right or wrong but the growing demand for clarify, visibility and ethically sourcing our food supply chain (not just coffee) is becoming ever more present and creating a new market for these small batch roasters.

In a future blog post we will cover the last piece of this origin topic which is “traceability” but we would love to get feedback from readers on what their preference for estate grown vs. micro grown coffee is? And mentions of favourite brands?

Leave a comment below and let us know

-MyBeanMachine Team