Today we visited Coopedota Café located in Santa María de Dota. We were given a tour of the plantation, a lesson on how to make the perfect cup of coffee, and were able to trust some ourselves after the tour. Coopedota is a cooperative meaning that they have many people in partnership with their company….
Tag: Plus3 Costa Rica
Check out all the Plus3 Costa Rica blogs below!
Cooperation is Key
Cooperatives provide several advantages to smaller plantations who are willing to work together to maximize their profits. Smaller plantations can’t afford to purchase the equipment to produce and sell roasted coffee beans, so they often end up losing out on the profit that such procedures provide. Working as a cooperative also provides stability for the…
You load sixteen cajuelas, what do you get? Twenty thousand colones to help pay off your debt.
While today’s tour was largely review in terms of the actual process of producing coffee, we got to see a whole new perspective on the economic side of bean distribution. Whereas Doka was a mega crop, Life Monteverde was a humble artisan crop, and Britt was a grinder/roaster/producer, Coopedota acted more as an alliance between…
It’s (Not) Always Good to Cooperate
Today, we visited the Dota coffee plantation, which serves as a part of a cooperative of over 900 other farmers/coffee plantations in the area. In other words, as opposed to being one centrally owned and operated entity like a plantation like Doka is, Dota is a part of a cooperative of other entities that all…
Dota and its Impact on the Community
Today we visited Coope Dota which focuses on the production of coffee. Coope Dota differs from other plantations we have visited as they work under a cooperative. A cooperative does not grow their own coffee, but instead collects their coffee from 900 small family farms within the community. Dota requires at least 1 hector of…
Optimizations of Cooperation
A cooperative is an organization which operates under the leadership of many member-owners. These partial owners all have a voice in running the business. The democratic nature of cooperatives means many people from different backgrounds and knowledge can have input into the company’s decisions. Solutions which consist of the viewpoint of a diverse number of…
Dota Lotta Coffee
Today in Costa Rica we had the chance to tour the Dota Coffee Cooperative and understand the basics of how the company operates. A cooperative is different from others company – it is made up of many small participants that pool resources, information, and expertise to increase their presence in the market. The cooperative business…
Doting on DOTA
Today we visited the DOTA farm, where we got to learn some new things about the coffee process through a cooperative perspective rather than just a single farm. Instead of following the methods of a traditional farm and solely using one area of land, a cooperative takes coffee from various producers and then creates a…
Coco for Coffee Making
ADVANTAGES of Co-Ops There are many advantages to being in a cooperative. It allows for smaller companies to have access to resources without having to sell out to a larger company like Doka. By buying in, they can gain access to things like education on sustainable and more effective farming practices, connections with labs that…
A Whole Latte Coffee
Today, we learned about how a cooperative coffee industry (Dota) operates and produces. Their process is very different than any other plantation we visited. A cooperative is much like a big cooperation of the whole community. There are surely advantages and disadvantages to a process like so. The cooperative serves as an advantage to the…
A Cool Coffee Cooperative
During our adventures today, we had our final plantation visit. We went to the Dota plantation, and I really enjoyed being there since we learned about a new, interesting way for a coffee company to be setup. While the other plantations we visited were traditional companies, Dora was a cooperative. The main difference between the…
Unidos estamos, dividos caemos
Coppe Dota is a coffee cooperative in Costa Rica. This means they pool together coffee from about 900 farms in the central valley and roast and sell it. This comes with many pros and cons. The pros mainly include being able to compete with large companies. The individual farmers can pool together resources and help…
Day O!
Bananas and pineapples have a slightly different supply chain than coffee. In banana and pineapple production, the chain begins with the farm, just like it does for coffee, but from the farm “the beautiful bunch of ripe bananas [and pineapples]” goes directly to a shipping company. In coffee production, the coffee is grown and then…
An A-Peeling Day At The Banana Plantation
Today we went to two different plantations; one grows and exports bananas and the other does the same with pineapple. These two plantations were extremely different from the coffee. First, we visited the banana plantation that was run by a local family. Here, their plot of land with bananas and plantains was very small compared…
Sustainability: bananas and pineapples
When talking about the sustainability of a coffee or banana plantation, it would be best to mention how banana plantations try to maximize the production of crop in as small a space as possible, as well as that they use every part of the banana tree. When the pandemic hit, and they could no longer…
Apples to Oranges, or rather Coffee to Bananas!
For today we visited two different kinds of plantations. Pineapples and Bananas! Both were awesome and really shed some light on the supply chain of simpler products like native fruits in the country. Because of this I’d like to compare and contrast the supply chain between the local fruit farms to the coffee farms we’ve…
Peter Piper Picked A Piña
There is a world of difference between the coffee bean business versus the banana and pineapple business. When it comes to banana and pineapples, you take the fruit directly from the farm to transporters to retailers. However, when you’re working with coffee beans, you have to take them through the roasting process which adds another…
Going Pineapples for Bananas
In the lowlands of Costa Rica, there are many banana and pineapple plantations scattered throughout. Having the chance to visit both types today, we learned about how these plantations operate. Both had a large focus on sustainable farming and put in great efforts to achieve the smallest environmental footprint possible. The main way both of…
Who Cultivates Pineapples Under the Sea?
In comparing today’s crops with those of coffee, it certainly seems like the fruits are a bit simpler to cultivate, especially given that they correspond with our expectations of modern agriculture. Whereas coffee requires a very convoluted process of hand-picking, cherry-sorting, de-shelling, washing, and roasting. plants like pineapple merely need to be sliced off of…
Pineapple Tour
Today, we had the opportunity to visit both a banana plantation and a pineapple plantation. After experiencing this, I think that there are many similarities and differences between the operations of coffee, banana, and pineapple plantations. One main difference is the initial intended role of these products in the supply chain. Although coffee was grown…