Today was our last day in Monteverde before heading back to Heredia. Last night, we went on a night hike in the forest near our hotel and it was quite an experience. I don’t think I’ve ever been more wet in my life due to the ongoing thunderstorm! However, though i complained in the beginning, it truly was a unique experience. Our tour guide has been doing this for the past 7 years and knew quite a lot of information and took wonderful pictures of animals and plants for us. At the end of the hike, I was extremely cold and tired, but we were able to end the night having dinner together and talking about the hike.
As for this morning, we had breakfast at the hotel and then headed to Life Monteverde, a coffee farm. This farm was different than Hacienda Doka and Café, their main focus was towards sustainability and they just had a different approach on some aspects of coffee. For instance, looking into the daily life of a Tico farmer, we noticed that their mission and beliefs were rooted into the community and focusing building their business in the log term rather than short term. For instance they focused on using biofertilizer which could take up to 7 years to introduce the bacteria to the soil and allow the plants to live healthy with the bacteria. This clearly shows the dedication the tico farmers have and the long hours they put into the farm. Despite the challenges of expensive fertilizers and labor intensive hours, the Tico farmers remain dedicated to their sustainable practices. They also commit some of their time towards education, having tours to teach about sustainability and the ways of their daily lives and harvesting practices.
If I was a Tico farmer, I would follow similarly in the footsteps I saw today, and want to engage in sustainable practices. Like stated above, it is extremely labor intensive and expensive, but from a business viewpoint, I also see a lot of opportunity for further growth and tourism. Because being a farmer runs in their families, I don’t know if I would see myself as anything else except a farmer, or something in the business industry working with farming.
Something I found surprising is that they have formed alliances with their competitors instead of treat them as competition and they also buy their coffee seeds from neighboring farms, showing a strong sense of community support. I think this matters a lot because community ties are important to have and being apart of a community means a bigger family and more support. Technology, such as using a weed wacker for the weeds, helps create a more sustainable farm. Even though the introduction of more technology is expensive and labor intensive, it helps the farm in the end. The biggest takeaway about today was that it is great to have sustainable practices, but it requires and time and money if you really want to see change.
