A number of processes are involved in converting coffee from the fresh coffee cherries to the green coffee beans which are eventually sold to roasters. These processes have a great effect on the quality, and therefore the price, of the final green coffee. Depending on their resources, growers may be able to carry out some of the processing themselves, before selling the beans. The more they do the higher the price they can obtain for their crop. Farmers who do not have the equipment to process their coffee either pay a processor to do it for them, or sell their coffee on to processors.

Coffee is a very labour intensive crop, grown on both large and small plantations. Most coffee is still harvested by hand, although some larger farms now employ mechanical harvesters. For best quality, only the ripe, red cherries are selectively picked, leaving unripe cherries on the branches to ripen for picking later. As each tree must be visited several times during the harvest, this is the most expensive method. Alternatively, the farmer may judge the time to harvest, and then strip the trees of both ripe and unripe cherries in one go. This is done by the pickers sliding their hands along the branches, allowing the cherries to fall onto a tarpaulin spread beneath the tree, from where they are collected. This is more efficient, but results in lower quality.

After harvesting, the next step is to remove the outer layers of the bean and create a stable, dry green coffee bean. Each cherry contains two coffee beans which must be separated from the skin, pulp and paper-like 'parchment' that surround them, and this can be achieved using two different methods, depending on location and local resources: dry processing and wet processing.

Dry processing
The ‘dry’ method is the simplest and more economical of the two methods. Additionally, it is often the only method available.

Using the dry processing method, the cherries may be washed, prior to drying in the sun. The cherries are then laid out in the sun, directly on the ground, on plastic sheets, on drying tables, or on cemented areas and are raked over regularly. If it starts to rain they are covered over. During the course of about four weeks or so, the cherries become brittle, form a hard outer shell. This is then broken away by hulling machines and the coffee bean remains. 
 
Larger farms may have mechanical dryers which are used instead of, or in addition to, sun-drying, and these can dry the cherries in three or four days.

Wet processing
The wet method requires significant investment and more care.

The cherry pulp is almost immediately removed in a pulping machine, which crushes the outer layer with abrasive disks or cylinders while leaving the beans undamaged. Ideally, this should be done no more than 24 hours after the beans have been harvested. Water is used to wash away the outer layer and to sort the immature from the mature beans. The wet beans are then allowed to ferment, which removes the slippery outer skin. This outer skin can also be removed by a machine called a demucilaginer. The beans are then washed a final time. This leaves beans with the papery parchment still on them, and these are dried in the sun or in mechanical dryers. Once dry, the parchment coffee is fed through hulling machines to remove the parchment.

Wet processing produces better quality coffee, and is therefore often used in conjunction with selective picking of the cherries.