Coopedota is a cooperative located in the Tarrazú region of the country, consisting of 900 families that work together to pool resources and personal expertise to increase their presence in the coffee market of Costa Rica and improve the communities of families nationwide.

To expand, a major advantage of being a member of a cooperative is that the buying of coffee helps each family involved so that they may provide for their own families as well as develop community resources. Specifically, the company is part of the Rainforest Alliance, which works with coffee farmers to improve their livelihoods and the health and well-being of their communities. Also, being part of a cooperative means that farmers have access to information about consumers, a chance to sell their product, and create national recognition for their smaller farms (recognition that they could not get otherwise).

Conversely, having a cooperative lessens the competitive nature in the marketplace, so each coffee farmer loses the ability to make more money as an individual. A specific disadvantage that we discussed is that stock exchange of the cooperative has been low, which means less investments are being put into each farm. Because of this, the crop that is produced is lesser in quality, hurting all the members of the cooperative (nobody wants to buy lesser quality coffee).

Without of cooperative, there would be less control over how the community of Santa María de Dota functions as a whole. Also, without this cooperative, Café Privilegios (a shop combined with Coopedota where we enjoyed lots of coffee) would lose many of their benefits acquired through education. Currently, they have a partnership with a local high school that works to educate students on the coffee farming business as well as provides opportunities for them to learn how to become baristas. And I think it goes without saying, but without a cooperative, smaller coffee farmers would have a harder time establishing recognition and selling their products to Costa Rican consumers.

All in all, it was fascinating to see how a cooperative functions as opposed to many of the individual corporations we have visited so far. Looking to the future, I think the changing economy and effects of ecotourism will play a role in how Coopedota conducts their cooperative and or cause some members to drop out. It will be interesting to see how Coopedota performs under these conditions.