Today we visited both the Doka coffee bean plantation and a strawberry farm. Although both of the fruits can be served at breakfast there harvest, production and distributing systems have similarities, but also have many differences. 

Both of the farms were located at a higher altitude compared to where we were staying, this was extremely important for the coffee beans as the best environment for them is above 1,200 meters. The plants are also grown in rows just like most crops, it helps the farmers keep track of their fields and crop counts. At both farms, the pickers do all the work by hand early in the morning until early afternoon. Another noticeable similarity was that both farms either rotated crops or kept a diversified group of crops to keep the soil rich with nutrients. Although the coffee bean farm was mainly centered around coffee while the strawberry farm had lots of different crops. 

The biggest difference between the two farms was the amount of steps required to turn a raw product into a final good. The coffee beans had to go through a washing cycle, peeling cycle, fermentation, drying and then roasting which is all mainly done by a machine. In contrast, the strawberries just had to be picked then rinsed and distributed. The strawberries required a lot less machinery except for the canopies above them to regulate the environment and a drip irrigation system. The most interesting difference for me was that the coffee beans were all exported meaning most of the coffee you drink in Costa Rica is imported from surrounding countries. This is because the cost is so high that there isn’t demand for it locally. This is the opposite for the strawberries which have an even balance between what they sell locally and what they export. 

The biggest spot for improvement I saw was in the strawberry farm and how they irrigate their crops under the green houses. During the tour it was raining and most of this water was just running off into gutters and being redirected. It would be more sustainable to collect some of this rain water and use that for irrigation instead of pumping it from the ground.