Hi Noah,

You're looking for a group collectively called "Greenies," the people who trade in green beans.

The first link in the chain after the farmer is the mill or exporter. Mills buy the coffee cherries and wet process them into green beans. Large plantatioons have their own mills. Fair trade outfits have a coop mill following fair trade rules. Coop and semi-public mills with a variety of arrangements with farmers are also the rule in East African countries. In dry process areas, the role of the mill is taken by an agent who buys the farmers' dry processed cherries. This group has players who are predatory quasi-loan sharks. But in most cases, the private exporters and mill owners have a sterling reputation, like Bagersh and Ogsadey families in Ethiopia.

The make or break job of this link on the chain is to be extremely picky when sorting beans, and never to mix crap with gold. Best practice is to prepare perfectly prepped lots from the smallest, most uniform tasting area possible, and then create larger, cheaper lots form the cherries that don't make the cut. Depending on crop size and picking practice, there may be several price/quality tiers. Areas where only poor coffee is produced, e.g. Vietnam, there is no meticulous sorting, since even the best sorted product isn't particularly good.

The next link are the importers, who bring the coffees into the consuming countries and sell them to roasters. In some cases, importers are bypassed, and larger roasters buy directly form mills or at auctions. Mass coffee producers, and even medium large roasters like Illy, always buy direct. The big players in the specialty market are Volcafe, Maruyama and Royal. Cafe Imports, Castle Imports, and Ninety-Plus specialize in super premium coffees.

The two jobs of importers is to get the best coffees and to get it to the roasters fast enough that it's still fresh. The better they do this, the more money they can get.

This is roughly accurate, but I'm not an expert; so there are probably holes.