COFFEE

In the last two days our class traveled to two diffrent coffee plantations that are very famous here in Costa Rica. The first one we visited was a coffee plantation that recently won the national award for Costa Rica´s number one coffee. I was very suprised to hear this considering the fact that the owner had only been in business for a couple years. This plantation was an example of the traditional system of growing and producing coffee. Including herself, the plantation hired 7 workers year round, and 70 during harvesting season. She explained how the region in which she grows impacts her decisions and makes her bean diffrent from other competition. The plantation is located up in the mountains. She went on to explain that for her it was near impossible to maintain an organic plantation due to her elevation and the falling prices of coffee in Costa Rica. Without the tradional way of growing using fertilizer and chemicals the plants would not get enough nutrients to grow. The fact that she is located up in the mountains means that the plants are exposed to less sunlight which obviously would have an impact on the plants. In the past years Costa Rican coffee prices has dropped dramatically. This makes it very hard for the farmers to stay in business . She explained that prior to her award she had made about a dollar per pound of coffee bean produced. What was shocking is how much money is pulled out in expenses. About 50% of that dollar made is used in expenses. I have never heard of a crop that costs so much to maintain. The expenses go to the constant upkeep of the land and work that goes into the picking and roasting process. But things are not so tough for her now that she recently won the award for Costa Rica´s number one bean. Now she sells her coffee for about 15 dollars a pound which is an extremely high price. The farm has focused its efforts on truely creating quality of the bean apposed to quantity. I quickly understood why the coffee was number one when we got to taste it. It was literally like nothing i had tasted before, although i am not a huge coffee drinker. The taste was extremely rich and potent. A couple of people were trying coffee for the first time and probably will not venture another cup for a long time. My roommate Jamie had two cups and could not sleep for hours haha! I thought it was hilarous.

The next day we traveled to a more commercial farm called Cafe Britt. This farm was definately different than the day before and seemed to be heavely tourist focused. Although the scenery was not as beautiful as the mountains, the informational tour was amazing. They walked us through everything from the harvesting and picking to the roasting and packaging. I had no idea so much effort went into preparing the coffee bean. They even went as far as to explain how to prepare and taste the perfect cup of coffee. Did you know that a cup of coffee is only good for 20 minutes. They took us inside the factory-processing area where we got a look at the roasting and packaging machines that prepare the famous brand for sale. They truely had efficiency and mass production down to a science. And did i mention that they are organic!! I would never expect that the small plantation would be traditional and the mass produce would be organic. That seems a little reverse to what i am used to. Cafe Britt gathers its coffee beans from houndreds of different farmers across the country. I got the impression that they were like the walmart of Costa Rican coffee in the sense that they go around to small local plantations and buy the coffee for bulk for cheap prices. This probably leads to the pricing problem that many coffee farmers face. The overall tour was very informative and i learned alot about both the production and origion of coffee. An intresting fact that stuck with me was that coffee was discovered in Ethiopia Africa buy a goat herder. What happened was the goats went up to these bushes with red berrys and started to eat them. Almost imidiately the goats went wild, jumping and running around!

Today in business class we learned about how business decisons have a strong impact on how the company is sucessfull. We went into depth about how the decisions on production and how you go about it has a strong impact on sales and survival. This relates to the small tradional coffee farm vs. the large organic farm. Since the small farm has decided to use chemicals and be non-organic it faces the risk that one day the world may decide to only want fresh organic beans and she will have to start all over from scratch. Instead she has decided to take the short term benifits route by using these chemicals to inhance production and quality of the product. Cafe Britt on the other hand has gone organic which is harder to produces but looks better on the green sustainable business side of things. We have seen a huge shift in green marketing and environmental practices which will most likely benifit them in the future. It is decisions like this that impact the fact on wether or not businesses survive in the long run.