Inorganic Coffee in Costa Rica

Coffee production in Costa Rica first began in 1779 after the plant was brought over from Saudi Arabia. This first type of coffee was of the Arabica species, and it is still the top species grown today. By 1829, coffee had surpassed all the other products produced in Costa Rica to become the number one source of revenue. Coffee remained at the top of the export list for a long time, but currenlty it accounts for less than 10% of exports. This is not necessarily because coffee demand has decreased but because of the Central American Free Trade Agreement that has encouraged thousands of businesses to invest here in Costa Rica. These foreign businesess are atrracted by tax incentives and their products now account for a majority of exports. The Free trade Agreement also lowered tariffs on trade between countries in the Americas, which has allowed coffee exports to increase, despite the percentage decrease in total exports from Costa Rica.

I remember reading in one of our books that Costa Ricans do not produce a substantial amount of coffee, but they pride themselves on the excellent quality of their coffee. In order to learn more about this well known industry here, we visited a family owned Coffee Plantation in the mountains of the town of Alejuela. The bus trip there was quite terrifying because we had to travel on skinny dirt roads that were full of rocks and potholes up the side of this mountain in our gigantic charter bus. I'm pretty sure we were all shocked that we made it as high up the mountain as we did, or that we didn't get hit by other passing cars because the roads were so tiny! The slopes of these dirt paths were so steep that I really thought the bus was going to roll backwards at any moment. Eventually the bus had to stop and we set off on foot towards the plantation. We took tons of pictures along the way of the gorgeous views from way up there. Farming here is so much different from the Great Plains where everything is flat. Plants are grown on steep slopes up and down hills, and they are all surrounded by ¨natural¨ fences, which were mainly large trees or tropical bushes to separate areas of farmland. The natural fences really made everything so pretty.

The plantation is owned by a local business woman named Daisy and her husband, and they produce their own brand called Del Cafe Tal. They grow coffee at the highest possible altitudes up in the mountains, which is optimal for coffee growth. Daisy is involved in the entire business, as she grows the plants, collects the beans, dries them, roasts them, and brews the coffee at a little store in her town. She recently won the award for the best coffee in Costa Rica, and Costa Ricans always claim that if you are the best in Costa Rica you are the best in the world when it comes to coffee. The plantation was gorgeous and the views were even better. Daisy and her husband were originally inorganic coffee farmers, and they followed the normal practices of fertilization and using pesticides so that they could produce the largest amounts of coffee beans possible. When the trend came around to switch to organic growth, they jumped on the bandwagon and tried it out. However, organic coffee growing was very difficult for the family because the increase in revenue was minimal and was not worth the extra work. Also, the switch from inorganic to organic reduced the number of sacs that the plantation produced from 800 to only 30. Thus, their profits greatly decreased and it was very difficult to sustain the business. Daisy and her husband also explained that the coffee business is very corrupt (which is not that shocking because it seems that a lot of business practices here are corrupt as well). She said that many inorganic farmers claim that their coffee is organic in order to get better business. After 3 years of struggling to make a profit with organic coffee, Daisy and her husband switched back to inorganic practices. She continued to receive only $1.50 per pound of her coffee sold. However, she recently just won the award for best coffee in Costa Rica, and this will allow her to receive almost $15 per pound! Don't worry Mom, I bought a bag of her coffee and I will be bringing it back home... everyone in the group who tried it said it was delicious!

It seems as though organic coffee is a very difficult crop to produce in Costa Rica because of the corruption and the minimal increase in revenue. Small farmers like Daisy cannot compete with the larger companies such as Starbucks that are able to produce organic coffee at much larger volumes that bring in larger profits.