I can’t believe that our two weeks in Costa Rica are almost up! I thought it would’ve felt like so much longer than it did. Today we did one of the most fun things this entire trip, a hike along the La Paz waterfalls. After that, we returned to Ulatina and finished working on our projects. For this entire trip, my group has been working on the “sourcing” aspect of the tropical agriculture supply chain. Here is what I learned at each stop we made during our journey.

Farms

Farming isn’t just about producing the fruits and products that we know and love. There are many more steps that these plantations have to take before production. These plantations have to source their labor, machinery, and other agricultural necessities. Many of the larger farms that we visited used immigrant labor, especially from Nicaragua and Panama. Much of the technology they use is also very old, as they received it from Germany and England early in the industrial revolution. Growing one crop for long periods of time leads to a lack of nutrients, making fertilizer a necessity in a productive farm. I never realized how much had to be put into farming to get anything out of it.

Processing mills and exporters

I never thought about the entire arduous process the coffee fruit has to go through before it is turned into the golden bean. When we toured Doka, they didn’t have to worry much about the sourcing, because they just sourced their own crops. However, for other processing companies, it is super important that they are sourcing a quality product so that they themselves can be exporting a quality product.

Roasters

Roasters like Britt have to put an enormous amount of effort into sourcing a quality product that they can turn into usable roasted coffee. They source from over 4000 different farms in Costa Rica to ensure their quality. I was super interested in how the master coffee tasters were able to guarantee the exact same flavor with different batches of beans every year.

Customers

Customers only have to worry about being smart about what product they are buying. They are able to do research about the products that they are buying and ensure that they are buying a good one. The quality of the processes that the coffee producers is something that the customers have to take into account when they source their coffee.