Organic Coffee Farm in Monteverde

Last Sunday I had a chance to visit an organic Coffee Farm. Coffee played an important role in Costa Ricas past and is of great economic importance to Costa Rica today. Coffee was the crop that in the early years of statehood provided income as an important export article. And in stark contrast to the two other big export crops,banana and pine apple, coffee cultivation spread the wealth much more evenly across the farm population. That is because of the geography/topography coffee cultivation in Costa Rica has never been practiced on huge plantation but  in relatively small fields (most under 5 acres) and on steep terrain. Until today most coffee is produced by small farmers who are organized in farmer cooperatives. The cooperatives realized quickly that under the Costa Rican conditions, quality instead of quantity would be the focus if they were going to compete with the big plantation on the high planes of Colombia and other countries.

Victor Luis Torres is 70 years old and part of the Santa Elena Coffee Farmer Cooperative. The coop currently sell about half of its coffee to tourists in the area and the other half to the US, mostly a roaster in Montana.  Victors farm borders the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, protected land of incredibly high biodiversity. Interestingly, the land was purchased and protected by group of Quakers, escaping the Korean war draft, which ran against their pacifist philosophy. Victors farm is about 40 hectares (100 ac) located partially on steep hills and partially on gently rolling ground at an altitude of about 1200 meter. Three ha are under coffee cultivation, 1 ha bananas, 5 ha primary forest, 2 ha for farm buildings, garden and roads and the remainder in pasture. He milks 32 cows.  The farm provides income for himself and his wife as well as his three sons with families.The 3 ha coffee are the farms main income. With 3 ha, he is actually one of the bigger grower of this coop.

The Monteverde Coffee from the Santa Elena coop is certified as Fair Trade coffee, and all members have to adhere to the strict guidelines. All members are subject to unannounced inspections and one members missteps would mean the loss of certification for all coop members. The coop does not have an organic certification and the members are allowed to use low toxicity pesticides and synthetic fertilizer. A few "organic like" principles are in the fair trade guideline. For example, a farmers is not allowed to depend solely on coffee as an income but must have multiple crops/products for sale. In any case, many of the coop growers are growing their coffee organically, without receiving a better price for doing do. Some simply do not have the money for synthetic inputs while others have a clear philosophical leaning and like Victor many years of experience in organic production.

Victors has a multistory agroforestry farm. A large garden with food crops, fruit trees, herbs and chickens provide much of the food (other than the staples of rice and beans) and medicines for the four families. Forests surround his fields and pastrues to provide habitat for beneficials, windbreaks protect the young coffee plants, fruit trees are interplanted in the coffee plantation, no pesticides are used,and the hulls from the coffee berries are composted with cow dung and red worms, dried and applied as the only fertilizer in the plantation.It was very inspiring to learn from Victor during the two hour tour and the obligatory coffee afterwards.

Pictures of the coffee cultivation practices, the plantation, and coffee plants in different growth stages will follow.  

Spanish Language and Tropical Agriculture in Costa Rica

The final  part of my professional development year has started. During my stay in Costa Rica I am planning to accomplish three objectives: 1) studying Spanish, 2) learning about organic agriculture in the tropics, and 3) scoping out the posibility of developing a Costa Rica field trip course for my students.

I have been studying Spanish in the saftey of my home since Christmas. Now it was time to put it to the test in Costa Rica. I just finished attending two weeks of Spanish language school in Tamarindo, on the Northwest coast of Costa Rica. I was glad that the speech program had paid off. I was placed right away into an intermediate level. Of course talking to real people in Spanish was quiet different than talking to the computer screen.... I was very quiet the first two days..... But soon I became a little more confident and more comfortable in my role as a student. The teaching was intensive. We were four students in the first week and two in the group in the second week. The teachers switched after a week. Both my teachers were very good. Thank you Alba and Alejandra. Besides the Spanish they taught me much about Costa Rica, its people, politics, and geography. I had also chosen a home stay, meaning that I overnighted, had breakfast and dinner with a family some 10 mile inland. That of course gave me more Spanish practice and insight into the life of ordinary Ticos, as the like to refer to themselves. I wish I could have stayed longer.

Now I am off to see agriculture colleagues at several different universities across Costa Rica. In fact I already visited Dr. Hega Blanco, an entomologist at the University of Cost Rica and a (the?) driving force in organic Agriculture at UCR. Over the weekend,when the Spanish school was not in session I was also able to visit an organic coffee farm near the famous Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. More on that in my next blog entry.

PS: By accident (or stupidity...) I shiped my camera cable to Oregon. I will therefore not be able to upload any of the Costa Rica picture before I return.