From what I learned in the Doka tour today, the coffee process consists of three primary steps: harvesting, peeling /drying, and roasting. Generally, Costa Rican coffee plantations only grow high quality Arabica coffee, and workers hand pick it over a 4-month harvest season spanning from October to January. Coffee berries are harvested by the cajuela (about 25 lbs of coffee berries, at $2 per cajuela), and then sorted by quality in the wet mill to be peeled and dried, and lastly are roasted for various durations to achieve different flavors of coffee.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear about the worker benefits Doka offered to its majority Nicaraguan coffee pickers (although native Costa Ricans do work on coffee plantations as well). According to our tour guide, Doka provides its workers with housing on the plantation, electricity, daycare, and so-on–the only thing workers pay for, essentially, is food. I also found it interesting how the Doka decided to plant mango and eucalyptus trees on their plantation; not only do they distract the birds and insects that might eat the coffee plants, they also provide extra shade to the plantation.

I also thought the technology used on the plantation was interesting. Our tour guide described it as “old fashioned”, with the machinery being up to 100 years old. I did wonder if it would make the process more efficient if there was an AI system, for example, to differentiate good quality coffee from poor quality coffee, as opposed to the wet mill system that uses suction power from the water to separate the coffee berries. However, continuing to use water in this step of the coffee process may actually be more sustainable, since an AI system might require more electricity and materials for construction, come at a higher cost, and potentially put human workers out of jobs. Also, the water comes from a river behind the plantation, which is cleaned and then returned back to the river after going through the wet mill. This recycling of water also contributes to the sustainability of the wet mill as opposed to a more up-to-date, yet costly technology.

So, does Costa Rican coffee deserve the hype its gotten? As for taste, my answer may be biased because I am not the biggest coffee fan. However, I think Costa Rican coffee does deserve the hype due to the meticulous process it takes to transform the coffee berries into the coffee bags we can easily buy off the shelves in the store as we’re so used to in the United States. Another reason it deserves recognition is because of how the process is as environmentally friendly as possible: water in the wet mill is recycled and returned to its source, plantation workers limit inorganic pesticides to the best of their ability, and peeled coffee berry skin is used as compost.