After a tasty breakfast of eggs, toast, and a spread of fruit at the home stay, we headed up to Alajuela to visit the Doka Coffee plantation, followed by a local strawberry farm. Throughout the day, we learned about production techniques and strategies for both plants. These proved to be quite different for each in order to accommodate the delicacy of each plant.  

I was super excited for the strawberry farm, and I was not disappointed! I have only ever picked strawberries in my backyard, so being on a larger farm was new and exciting. The process of growing strawberries is rather simple. The plants are grown in rows and kept under a covering that controls the temperature and water exposure. An irrigation system is in place to water the plants when needed. The plants produce the delicious fruit year-round, all of which are picked by hand; however, the plants only last about two years. This is a measurable difference compared to the coffee plants, which can live up to 30 years! However, the coffee cherries, the casing which contains two coffee beans, can only be harvested during the specific harvest months, October to March.

Coffee has a very meticulous production process, which uses a lot more machinery in combination with manual labor. When coffee plants are first planted, they go into a greenhouse for one year, then are moved outside where they must survive on their own without any sort of covering, unlike the strawberries. It takes two more years of growth before the coffee cherries can be picked. Each cherry is picked by hand, a grueling task for the workers who are exposed to extreme heat and must carry heavy baskets of cherries. I was very surprised by the conditions these workers must undergo. I thought with how advanced technology is today, there would be an easier way to pick the cherries, however, this is the way it must be done to maintain quality. Due to Costa Rica being a small country, they prioritize quality over quantity since there is not enough land to grow huge amounts of coffee. To ensure the quality is the best of the best, there is a series of tests. One example is the float test, where they are placed in a large water tank. The higher the quality, the heavier the cherry, so they will sink to the bottom while the lighter, lesser-quality cherries stay at the top and can then be removed. One of the machines Doka has can run without electricity, which I find super interesting! Instead, a constant water flow is used to push the cherries at the bottom up through a pipe and onto the next stage. The quality control of coffee is much more intense than that of strawberries, as the strawberries are simply picked when red and packaged. Although coffee and strawberries have very different methods of production, after seeing the conditions of each, I have a greater appreciation for both products.