On our second full day in Costa Rica, our first company visits started with the Doka Coffee Plantation and a strawberry farm. After another breakfast of gallo pinto, we hopped on the early bus to the Doka plantation. It was another beautiful sunny day, and perfect weather for the plantation tour. We learned about the processes of making coffee from the cherry and ultimately ending with delicious roasted coffee. I was impressed with the technology implemented to automate the process and used to optimize efficiency to produce quality yields. I found it interesting how some of the technology was more rudimentary in nature, and other machines were more complex. For example, the peelers were efficient but adhered to a fairly simple concept with the sorting by size, in contrast, our tour guide explained how lasers were used to detect lower quality green beans and cherries. The process overall had many steps that meticulously ensured a high-quality yield, and the quality was based on color, weight, and size. Next, we went to the strawberry farm, where the process was quite different. The process seemed simpler overall, with fewer steps in the process. We learned that the strawberries are kept under tarps to maintain heat in the growing environment and that the strawberry plants last two years while producing strawberries.
Comparing the two, it seemed to me as though in the strawberry farm more effort was put into optimization of the growth process through the use of fertilizers and pesticides, as opposed to the coffee plantation, where more emphasis is placed on optimizing the various steps in the process to ensure quality product. One similarity is the use of animals; on the strawberry farm, there were many dogs and cats around, presumably trained to serve a purpose on the farm. At the coffee plantation, the tour guide explained how birds and the coffee have a mutualistic relationship as the birds eat mosquitoes attracted to the plants but not the coffee. In terms of ideal conditions, the coffee requires an optimal humidity of 11% and diverse soil. The strawberries grow well in warmth and with little exposure to bugs that have a parasitic relationship to the plants and take their nutrients.
It was incredibly interesting learning about the processes of coffee and strawberry growth, and I look forward to learning more on future tours on this trip.
