Today, we said goodbye to Montaña De Fuego, our hotel in La Fortuna, and made the treacherous four hour bus ride to Monteverde. On our way, we made brief stops at the wind turbines, where Professor Teeter educated us on how they provide energy to Costa Rican cities. After our stops, we arrived in Monteverde, and went to our second coffee tour at Café Monteverde, where we were served lunch, given a brief informational lecture on the farm, took a tour, did some mild gardening work, and had a coffee tasting of their delicious products. Throughout our tour, our guide thoroughly explained the lengths that the farm goes through to operate sustainably, whether it was utilizing the charcoal from burning coffee wood to help recreate the good bacteria in the crops, composting, paying fair wages to their coffee pickers, or trimming the beaks of the chickens to provide a safer living environment. To me, these practices showed just some of the many advantages of practicing agricultural sustainability for farms. Because of these practices, Cafe Monteverde seems to be able to utilize each part of the production of their products, reduce waste, and retain employees, while still producing high-quality products for their consumers. I also noticed that with their sustainable practices, they were still able to keep their prices fairly low compared to businesses like Britt, which we visited during our time in Heredia.
Despite the success that they have proved within their sustainable practices, I did note that they had a few setbacks. During our tour, our guide emphasized that in order to keep workers coming back to work in the coffee plantations, he has to pay them a reasonable wage per basket of coffee cherries. This, in turn, creates higher labor costs, which makes their overall costs higher. After the tour, when we went into the gift shop, I did realize that they had less variety of product within their store. This could be a result of their sustainable practices, as companies with a smaller farm, that have a focus on keeping their procedures sustainable, could have a lower yield than a companies like Britt, who had a wall display of their many different roasts and blends. Finally, when we were completing our service task and assisting them in planting beans and corn, I realized the overall labor intensively that comes with sustainable practices. Because they are not reliant on machines, each step of their process is done by hand, which could be
