After Plus3 Costa Rica took Tortuga Island on Sunday, we returned to our study of the coffee industry in Costa Rica on Monday which started with a visit to the ICafé, the coffee institute of Costa Rica. The ICafé is the government’s way of regulating the coffee industry while leaving the commercialization of the crop in the hands of the private sector. As I will discuss, the ICafé is beneficial to almost all the coffee producers in Costa Rica even though it demands a lot from farmers.
The first job of the Coffee institute is to ensure the quality of coffee beans. In Costa Rica, the quality of coffee beans comes before the quantity as they only provide one percent of the world’s coffee. To make sure that the quality of beans is as advertised, the ICafé collects samples of coffee from every coffee producer and performs various chemical analyses that return chemical compositions, allowing the ICafé to determine the quality of the coffee. They also perform analyses on soil from farmers and give recommendations for how they can improve their soil to give more fruitful harvests. Why do they do this, though? The goal of the ICafé may be to make the coffee industry as profitable as possible, but they certainly don’t that for free. When coffee producers sell their coffee, 1.5 percent of their earnings go towards the ICafé and their work which extends beyond doing retroactive analysis of soil and beans.
The institute also plays a role in sustainability of farming through research, specifically researching less harmful defenses against threats to coffee plants. As we learned earlier in the week, coffee leaf rust is a major threat to coffee, and this comes in the form of a fungus. Instead of using a chemical to treat plants, the ICafé developed its own fungus that naturally fights the leaf rust. As opposed to a chemical treatment, this method has no harmful byproducts. The work conducted to fight diseases is an extremely important part of the ICafé’s job because many farmers do not have the knowledge or the resources to it themselves. While we have seen some major coffee plantations during our time here, these companies, like Doka, make up only 10 percent of the industry. 90 percent of the coffee farmers only own five to ten hectares, or around 17 acres.
As our tour continued outside, it was clear the ICafé was not growing their coffee to sell it. The plots were much smaller, and no two plots looked the same. Instead, the I Café planted several different, new coffee varieties in varying the degree of shade to observe how they grew and if they provided tasty coffee. They also grew coffee plants that had been cross-pollenated to see if they resulted in plants that were more resistant to leaf rust or droughts. If they found anything that was better, or worse, this information was made available to all farmers so that they could change their methods if necessary.
As with anything, there are definitely people who are not as enthusiastic about the ICafé. Since they regulate every coffee producer, even the bigger companies like Doka and Starbucks must also comply. This means reporting on their processes and adjusting them when necessary. They may not like this because they feel as if their processes are better, and they still have to pay the tax regardless of if they use the ICafé’s recommendations.
Today showed me that there is a bigger demand for engineers in the coffee industry than I thought. I thought that the coffee-producing process was well ironed out, but there are several aspects of it that are still in question. Additionally, the effects of climate change are constantly creating new challenges for coffee farmers in Costa Rica, meaning engineers must develop solutions to these new problems, which include droughts, diseases, and a shift in the rainy season. The ICafe is fighting this fight for the farmers who are not able to do so themselves in order to keep an important part of Costa Rican culture alive.