I used to work on a coffee plantation of about 1000 trees in Kona. The owners ran a very lean operation. Coffee doesn’t require much maintenance outside of picking season. They had one farm manager and a handful of WWOOFers (work trade volunteers) to help with keep up with farm work and mowing. During picking season they would hire pickers from Ecuador and the Philippines to come pick the cherries. There was a co-op that weighed and processed the raw cherries on the island. The co-op also handled warehousing. They would sell raw beans to a bigger fish for roasting and shipping. Three employees total and they did quite well. Kona is out of the ordinary though. It is well regarded and fetches a decent price wholesale.
Price is a huge thing. With that many trees they must have been doing only 2klbs of coffee a year on the high end (green). I don't see how they could have been doing "quite well" as green Kona beans sell for like $40-60/lb (a lot considering most green coffee is like $8 or so a pound).
In farming it seems that co-ops generally offer a little better price to the farmer than the usual list of suspects. Especially if your buyer is far enough away that it begins to affect the quality of your yield.
