Right now, one of the biggest threats to coffee plants is rust. Rust threatens plants by destroying their leaves and not allowing the plants to grow. This causes the plant to degrade overtime and after a few years, it cannot produce anymore coffee. At Icafe, they’re developing different fungi to combat this issue and to…

Since Monteverde’s founding, it’s been a wonderland of life and darkness. The life sprawls within the town from its people, but also the forest where hundreds of species of plants and animals thrive. The darkness is found by the sad reality that some animals are dying out from climate change and environmental destruction in the…

Farming in Costa Rica has evolved a ton in recent years; mostly due to global warming and long term climate change. Disease and new fungi that lived in the low lands are now coming to the high altitude communities. Because of this new climate, farmers are now unsure what their crop yield will be in…

When we arrived on Saturday, the culture shock hit me so hard. I wasn’t able to fully comprehend what I had got myself into. Here I am in a land where I don’t speak the language and don’t know my way around. I initially thought of Heredia as a dangerous place where I have to…

To enter San Jose, you must either go by car or train. This means seeing the country side in two different ways. If you go by train, which we did, this is the route that many products have taken in the past. The railway was created to transport bananas to port on the Pacific coast….

Compared to supermarket coffee, Cafe Britt is much more expensive and a “premium” product. As we were told today, coffee that is sent to supermarkets throughout Costa Rica are the second and third grade beans. The first grade beans are exported to other countries. Many Ticos probably don’t want to spend a lot on their…

In the United States, we see a vast amount of opinions expressed and preached. Assuming a country has a similar diplomatic format to that of the United States, many similarities can and will occur. In Costa Rica, they have a democracy like the United States. This, mixed with many opinions about candidates and the country’s…

When thinking about Costa Rica, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. This is my first time out of the US and I didn’t want to judge the country before actually seeing it. In the back of my mind, I thought that the city would be less protected. I was very surprised by the amount…

As a wannabe coffee connoisseur, I am truly eager to try world renowned and invigorating coffee. Being able to see where my beans come from and how they’re grown, cultivated, processed, and shipped will allow me to truly value what I hold in my hand every morning. But this whole process would be different if…