Where does your coffee come from?

Have I mentioned Arturo yet?

The man is amazing. He's a little dynamo-he tends to gesture wildly, walks around when making a point, spits a bunch...awesome guy. We met Arturo at the coffee mill near his farm and coffee plantation. Arturo has managed to bring coffee farmers in his area together and has helped many of them to become organic farmers. He took us around both the mill and his own farm, and gave us a crash course in the coffee trade. It's a complex topic, and I definitely won't do it justice. My professor, Susan, recommends the book Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed Our World.

Although I've seen the fair-trade stickers, and had heard about shade-grown coffee, I never knew the details. Here's the scoop: fair-trade means that the coffee farmer gets the profits from the coffee they grow. Not the businessmen and not the middlemen (known as coyotes in Costa Rica). This is a big deal. One coffee farmer is like one coffee bean within a ton of coffee. He's a little guy, and doesn't have a lot of power. Middle men take advantage of the coffee farmer. Coffee is only harvested once a year, and a lot depends on that yearly harvest of the Costa Rican coffee farmer. They get desperate, and if they sell out to a middle man who pays below the worth of the coffee, then the farmer will suffer for the rest of the year. If you buy fair trade, then you know that you are buying directly from the farmer.

Shade-grown coffee takes the efficiency out of coffee farming. *gasp!* What will we do without efficiency?!?!

Shade-grown means that the coffee is not grown as a mono-crop, but that it is grown alongside other plants, such as banana trees. The trees, a natural part of Costa Rica, provide key habitats for birds. Without the trees, you lose the birds. Since I've been here we've driven along many roads that have coffee plantations covering the hills (did you know that the quality of coffee increases with the altitude?), and the hills are barren of any trees. The other problem with the lack of crop diversity is that it taxes the soil. In order to grow that much coffee, year after year, the farmers coat their fields with chemicals.

Organically grown coffee means that it is grown without chemical fertilizers, fungicides or pesticides. Most of the farmers who are growing their coffee organically are also a part of fair-trade and shade-grown coffee. It gets kind of complicated, since the farmers need certifications for each of the three, and the certifications cost a lot of money. The small-time farmers in some areas have formed groups, and pay for the certifications together (it's like buying in bulk, it's cheaper if there is more of them doing it at once).They also do outreach-they educate farmers on what the three different elements mean.

Arturo is a big part of the organic coffee farmer group in his area. He also travels directly to the US to sell his coffee (it actually costs less!). He is trying to figure out a way to get the three certifications condensed to one, mainly so that the farmers will only have to pay for a single certification. If anyone can do it, it'll be Arturo.

He introduced us to a friend of his, a guy named Minor. Minor is also a coffee farmer, his family owns one of the largest privately owned coffee plantations in the area. After learning more about organic farming, he decided to try it out on his own land. Against the wishes (and without the support) of his family, he stopped using chemicals on a part of his family plantation. It's been about 8 years, and he thinks that it will be ready in 4 more years.

The soil was nearly dead when he began, drained of any health by the chemicals his family used in order to keep producing coffee crops year after year. With Arturo's help, he's learned to make organic fertilizers and to grow plants that are helping restore the nutrients in the soil. I was really impressed by Minor, but also reminded of the struggle it would be for those less fortunate than him. He was able to use finances from the other plots in the family plantation while he worked on switching to organic methods. What about farmers without that support system?

Guys like Arturo are important. He's fighting for the little guys, the small-time coffee farmers that are up against the Goliath corporations that buy coffee from everyone else. He's also supporting sustainable methods of farming. Growing plants side by side that complement one another (check out permaculture if you're interested, I basically mean that one plant helps replace the nutrients that another plant uses), using what the land provides instead of forcing it to grow what you want and how you want it and using the land in a way that will ensure future generations that same privilege.