Along a beans journey, from the plant to your cup, there is a long trip it must take to make it there. And the only reason it is in your specific cup, is because a lot of different people had to source that bean to you. Coffee farms are rather unique in they way they…

Cooperatives are a series of several different farms that pool their resources together to make the businesses more efficient. The cooperative we visited today was Santa Maria de Dota which is a series of over 900 farms. Dota works provides many benefits but has some short-comings. Dota started with just over 90 farms working together….

The coffee industry in Costa Rica is vitally important to the Tico economy and so are the fruit exports now. They have allowed the country to grow but have also had some negative effects. The coffee exporting in Costa Rica was the dominant industry for much of the countries existence, but now the other fruit…

On our last day in Monteverde, we had the opportunity to walk through the cloud forest and see an actual rain forest. It was an amazing attraction with lots of tourists. This was a perfect example of the shift in the economics of the country. Originally, much of the land was used for raising cattle…

Today we visited yet another coffee plantation and found some very interesting differences. Don Guillermo is one of the owners of Life Monteverde coffee and he gave us a very in depth tour tour of his families plantation and how they operate over 4000 feet above sea level. This plantation, like the others, is very …

Today we explored two important components of the coffee supply chain in Costa Rica. We explored Doka, a coffee bean grower (that does minimal roasting) and Britt that roasts coffee. Britt stands between the coffee grower and the consumer of prepared and roasted coffee. They take a lot of time and effort into making their…

In a lecture given by a Dr. Jose Diego Sanchez, we learned a lot about the structure of the Tico economy and how it shifted over the past three or four decades. This lecture explained many things about the culture that seemed very strange to an American. For instance: How is my host mother able…

Today we got to explore Heredia. Heredia is the city we are staying just outside of, and it was a very interesting day. We got to see the cities park in the center, there was music, fountains and many people enjoying the nice weather. Then we walked through the market which was filled with many…