(Sorry beforehand for the crazy layout of this post with this pictures. Also, you can click on each picture for a huge version of it)
Coffee is a major crop that is exported from Costa Rica, along with bananas. There are different types of plantations here, some in the mountains at high elevations and some are lower down. Yesterday we went to Del Cafe... Tal, a small plantation located North of San Jose in Alejuela, owned by Daisy Rodriguez. She is an entreprenurial woman who started her venture into the coffee business 10 years ago. She first started off with normal coffee (not organic), then she made the switch to organic which wastes about 2 years trying to get certified for that. She grew organic coffee for 3 or 4 years and
then switched back to regular non-organic because of the low profit from organic. Switching from normal to organic growing reduced her amount of coffee produced from somewhere around 100 bushels to 30 per year, and the price increase is not anywhere close enough to make up that difference.
HUUUGE bug from the Lion King that was present at the plantation.
She was also an extremely down to earth woman and was intelligent about her business practices. The cost of growing coffee add up to more than 50% of the price, and a lot of money from small farmers who sell to big companies end up in the hands of intermediaries. Her coffee used to sell for around $1.50 per pound, but a few days ago her farm won an award for having the best coffee in Costa Rica, which increased demand for her coffee greatly and now she sells it for $15.00 per pound.
Giant Flying Ant
She told us that winning the award not only increased her profits and recognition but it also raised the morale of her employees because they were part of growing award winning coffee.
She has 7 full time employees, many of whom we saw, and she hires more than 70 people to come work when it is time to harvest the coffee once a year. Coffee is an interesting crop because not all the beans can be picked at the same time because the beans ripen at different times even though they could be 1 inch apart on a coffee plant. The workers have to hand pick each bean which is amazing considering the amount of acres that each plantation is on. They also had many dogs on the farm.
Because she is an intelligent woman, she decided to take all the parts of the coffee production process, from the growing all the way to the packaging, and do it at
her own farm to elimate intermediaries and collect all the cash she can.
Her farm sun dries the coffee beans, as seen in this picture.
It takes longer for her beans to dry because of the altitude and the fact that it isn´t as sunny where her plantation is. She grows a type of coffee that does well in high altitudes and in the shade. They also have their own machine that squeezes the coffee bean out of its brown outer shell. I dont have a picture of it out of the shell but here is a picture of it inside the shell-ish type thing.
We also got a free sample of piping hot coffee, and me not being a coffee drinker, I had a sip and gave it to one of the other students who would appreciate it.
Lots of coffee producers claim they have organic coffee or fair trade and they dont. Fair trade coffee is a distinction that means that suppliers and consumers both get what they want; the best deal. It is basically a way for more profit to reach the smaller producers and farmers instead of going into the pockets of the intermediaries. This is a very good thing because in the past few years the price of coffee has dropped and many small farmers weren´t making enough profit to want to stay in business. Some bigger producers bought out small farms, and some small farms group together and sell their products to a single intermediary which earns them more money. The name of the major coop thing in Costa Rica is
COOCAFÉ, the Consortium of Coffee Cooperatives of Guanacaste & Montes de Oro. It began in 1988 to try to get fair trade prices for coffee for smaller scale producers. A little random background on Costa Rican coffee is that they were the first Central American country to register coffee as an export in 1840. Coffee currently brings in 11% of Costa Rica´s export revenues and account for 2.4% of the worlds coffee (http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/cooperatives.html). That may not seem like very much (2.4%), but you have to consider the size of the country. Costa Rica is about the size of West Virginia. Another random thought about coffee is that it originated in Africa, and the type grown in Costa Rica is Arabica. There are different levels of quality of Arabica, 1 through 5, so people from all walks of life can drink coffee.
Today, we went to Cafe Britt, a plantation of a much larger scale. It is like a big commercial coffee producer, unlike Daisy´s more homestyle feel. We were in the city and then we just stopped randomly and we were at their touristy location, not where they grow the majority of their coffee. Right when we got off the bus we were given iced coffee which was very sugary and decent to my taste buds but I don´t like coffee anyway so it was different. This whole place was extremely commercial and bizarre because Del Cafe.... Tal was so incredibly different. It was like going to a circus. There were 3 tour guides, who were more like actors and actresses, who helped explain the entire process of growing coffee. It takes 3 years for a coffee plant to produce a bean, and then they pick it, dry then, get the real coffee out of the shell, roast it, do other things that I can´t remember, and package it. Also, 80% of the weight of a coffee bean (pictured above in the part about Daisy´s farm) is just the covering around the bean. So a bushel weighing 25 lbs would yield only a few pounds of coffee which seems pretty crazy. This was a much much much larger scale production, even though it was a fake Disneyworld of a coffee plantation. They even had a theater with lights, sound, a stage, etc. It was just ridiculous. It was the place that tourists go, and that just isn´t my style. There were old white people from Florida there, and that just was a slap in the face about how touristy Cafe Britt was. I really wish I´d bought coffee from Daisy because I would much rather support her operation compared to the big corporate commercial place but I didn´t have enough money yesterday to do so unfortunately. They served us a very good lunch in a pretty nice looking restaurant which was a total 180 from yesterdays set up. Yesterday was in the mountains, under an open air shed type of things with 2 long tables and today was this resorty-feeling place with nice carved wooden chairs and gourmet food. It was just so different it blew my mind. They did have some delicious hot chocolate that I bought. I will try to remember to add more pictures later, but its time for bed.
stephanie taking in the scenery
looking for a toucan that Ronald heard
toucan search
coffee fields
relaxing in a hammock
dog
dog
large flying ant
chase and I with a dog
chase and I with a dog
dog and drying rack things
hammock
flying ant
flying ant
Our profs Saul and Glenn
Huge bug
where they process coffee
blue ant but came out a little blurry
matching roommates haha
