As a side note after the trip we had a survival spanish lesson which helped me a little to remember some spanish.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
First Coffee Trip
Today we visited a local coffee farm owned by Daisy Rodriguez in Alejula. This was a very interesting experience. We were supposed to go to another farm called Monte Cristo but for some reason unknown to me we went to Daisys farm instead. It was up on a mountain and the bus could only take us so far so we had to hike up the rest of the mountain and we saw some really nice scenery but I forgot my camera...boo. Apparently this farm produces the best coffee in Costa Rica. I got to taste it but i am not much of a coffee drinker so i do not know if it was good or bad..I assume it was pretty good though based on everyone elses reactions. Due to the fact that she was voted the best coffee in Costa Rica Daisy can sell her coffee for 15 dollars a pound as opposed to the average $1.5 (according to her), on the internet it siad that at one point prices were around 50 cents per pound, so she is doing pretty well. Due to the fact that coffee farmers usually get so little profit ($1.5/pound) a new trend is the Fair Trade Coffee. Some places that offer coffee recently started buying and selling fair trade coffee which is an attempt to give more money back to the coffee farmers instead of the intermediaries and distributors. This was started because coffee is one of the 3 most traded goods in the world and the people producing it get paid very little. According to my resources one big issue with the Fair Trade Coffee is how it is grown. Apparently the best way to grow coffee is to use shade trees which is slower but makes the coffee taste better and is better for the environment. One might think that by providing more money to the farmer the price of coffee would go up...as if it is not high enough already in some places...i think we are all familiar with starbucks, but the prices do not go up because the farmer gets more money but the middlemen are cut out. Daisy previously tried to grow organic coffee but gave it up three years ago because it was not working out. As i said before she is doing pretty well because after her award for the best coffee in Costa Rica people started paying more money for her coffee.
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