Coffee is one of Costa Rica’s most famous exports despite it only generating 2% of the country’s value from exports. Behind that are extremely powerful marketing forces employed by the Costa Rican coffee producers to maintain a high brand value, allowing them to charge a premium. As mentioned previously, the Costa Rican coffee industry is very small, and is shrinking due to demand for land for industry and housing encroaching on plantation lands. To keep themselves profitable, Costa Rican coffee producers market their product as high quality, organic, fair trade, Rainforest Alliance certified, etc. This marketing also allows them to compete with the massive quantities of coffee coming out of Brazil.
Part of the marketing by Doka, one of the largest coffee producers in the country, is the plantation tour we took today. Coffee on Doka plantations has a 28-year life cycle. First, a seed is planted and grown in a nursery for a year until it is strong enough to survive outside in the fields. When the plant is one year old, it replaces one of the 28-year-old plants in the field, where it stays for the rest of its life. The plants are only harvested once they’re three years old, and are harvested for 25 years. Coffee plants lose flavor the older they get, and Doka decided that 25 years of harvesting is the most they can extract from one plant.
What surprises me the most is the harvesting process. All coffee is harvested by hand by about 60% migrant workers and 40% Costa Rican workers. This is because coffee berries ripen between October and January and can overripen, and machines can’t discriminate between good and bad berries, nor can they easily harvest them without damaging the plant. I was also surprised by how well, relatively speaking, the workers are treated. Costa Rica has relatively strong laws protecting workers, even if they’re non-citizens. Workers work 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, and can earn about $30 per day. Furthermore, Doka provides housing, utilities, healthcare, and childcare for their workers.
Coffee is processed into “golden beans” (the step prior to roasting) in house, which means Doka retains 97% of the revenue from exporting coffee. The rest goes to the shipping company and other companies. Coffee berries are first separated by density; the higher quality ones sink, while the rest float. The good berries are peeled by machine, then sorted by size. The large beans are high quality and are 85% of each day’s harvest. The small ones are float tested, and the sinkers (%10 of harvest) are low quality beans. The discarded beans from both float tests are composted, while the good ones are fermented to remove sugar. They are then washed and dried, then aged for three months. This process did produce good tasting coffee, but I don’t know if that’s because I used more sugar or if the coffee is actually better.
