SIGUATEPEQUE - Nestled in the mountains of central Honduras, the "El Encanto" coffee farm is tackling this year's harvest with half the pickers it needs.
In Costa Rica's Central Valley, the "Hersaca Tres Marias" farm faces a similar dilemma. The seasonal labourers both rely on are among the thousands to have abandoned Central American shores in search of a better life elsewhere.
Coffee growers are at their wit's end, watching the fruit of their labours -- and their incomes -- shrivel up.
The authorities in Honduras estimate that 1,000 of its 9.5 million citizens leave every day with the hopes of making it to the United States for a chance at the "American dream."
They seek to escape rampant poverty and violence in one of the world's top ten coffee-producing countries.
Some 250,000 hectares of coffee plantations are shared between more than 100,000 mainly small-scale producers.
The industry generates a million jobs and accounts for about 38 percent of Honduras' agricultural GDP, according to the Honduran Institute of Coffee.
In the 2021/22 season, the country exported coffee worth some $1.4-billion.
Costa Rica, too, is a major producer, and similarly affected by emigration. But here the problem is slightly different.
The comparatively stable country relies heavily on hired hands from neighbouring Nicaragua for its coffee picking.
But since a clampdown on critics and the opposition following 2018 protests that were violently put down, more and more Nicaraguans are leaving for shores further afield.
Managua does not provide emigration data, but more than 164,000 Nicaraguans were intercepted at the US border in the 2022 fiscal year -- a three-fold increase in 12 months, according to American customs authorities.
Costa Rica boasts some 94,000 hectares of coffee plantations that employ about 25,000 pickers every season -- mostly Nicaraguans but also Panamanians and locals, according to Bilbia Gonzalez of the country's Coffee Institute.
The pickers earn about $0.15 per kilo.
Migrant workers from Nicaragua, a country of nearly seven million people, are "extremely important" for Costa Rica, which exported $337.8 million dollars in coffee in 2021/22, said Gonzalez.
Yet, "there are few Nicaraguans" to do the work, added Geovanny Montero, manager at Hersaca Tres Marias. "They have left for the United States."
Last year, the farm hosted 70 pickers, said Montero. This year, there are 50 -- a reduction he calculates will result in a five percent smaller harvest.
"That is a lot of money," Montero lamented as he pointed to fallen coffee fruit on the ground.