By Peter Granitz for NPR

Haiti once produced half the world’s coffee. The lush, shade-covered mountainsides provided an ideal environment for imported Arabica trees.

Today, Haitian coffee barely registers in global surveys. Trade embargoes, deforestation and the rise of global coffee powerhouses such as Brazil and Indonesia are just a few of the reasons. And now, there’s climate change.

But here in a stand of coffee trees near Beaumont, one of the few forested parts of Haiti, coffee — growing, drinking and selling it — remains part of the culture. Women sing Creole folk songs as they examine clusters of coffee cherries. Inside the fruit are pits that will be fermented, roasted, ground and, one day, brewed as coffee. They pull the bright red ones from branches and toss them into a plastic bucket.