Coffee Visits

Looking out from the mirador in El Cafetal

A view of the Parque Amboro in the background and the coffee plantations around Espejitos in the foreground.

View of Amboró from the road a little ways outside of Espejitos. The area that is in shadow about midway on the right side of the photo is where we were when we visited the coffee plot.

The coffee plot we visited.

Francisco demonstrating how the flowers of the coffee plant are used to cross-breed different beans.

Francisco in the coffee plot outside of Espejitos.

Hola a todos-

I must admit I am a bit behind with the blogging because internet connection has not been optimal, so the next few posts will be shorter as I try to catch up. Also note that the photos are backwards in order, the most recent is the lowest down.

Last Thursday I went with Raimy, an agronomist from PRODISA, and Francisco, a coffee farmer and technician to visit a few communities that farm coffee. As I think I mentioned in the blog a few entries ago, I came up with a project to keep me busy for the rest of my internship: attempting to gather information about producers of basic agricultural commodities for a database and maybe to start the certification process for Fair Trade goods. Raimy and Francisco volunteered to go along with me to visit the communities and it was awesome. The first place we went was Huaytú, but we had to turn back from visiting the coffee plantation when it became clear that we would have to cross the river Surutú in the car and Raimy said it would get stuck. We turned around and then headed on to the community of Espejitos around 45 km or so from Buena Vista.

The coffee plantations in Buena Vista are relatively new, the oldest are 20 to 25 years old and the one that we visited in Espejitos was only 3 years old. The coffee that is grown in this part of the country is apparently not as good as the coffee grown in Yungas (near La Paz) because the altitude is not optimal (only 400 meters above sea level) and it is too hot (average temperature here is 30 degrees celsius, for optimal coffee growth it should be in the 20s). What Santa Cruz coffee does have to offer is beyond organic roots, the farming is done in a way that is very envirnomentally friendly and the coffee has a good aroma. The coffee plots literally go all the way up to the border of the Parque Amboró, so they are literally in jungle-like territory. When we went to visit the coffee plot in Espejitos I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie, going down dirt roads with plants growing crazily all around and people with machetes walking to their own plots. When we got to the plot of land, Francisco showed me and Raimy the coffee plants and talked to us about how they are grown and managed.

In the afternoon we went to El Cafetal, the large coffee processer here in Buena Vista to see how coffee is processed. All of the farmers in the area sell their coffee to El Cafetal for very little money and El Cafetal processes it and thanks to many certifications that it has, it then sells the coffee for a lot of money to places like Starbucks. During the tour I saw a few of the guys who are in my English class, they work for El Cafetal in different capacities (as guides for the coffee tour, construction...). I am going to try and work with Francisco to get the Fair Trade certification process started, but I am not sure how successful my endeavor will be since international corporations would probably rather work with El Cafetal, a reputable private enterprise, than with farmers´ associations...It´ll be an interesting process to start at the very least, and the farmers are very interested in getting certified since they want to get paid more for their coffee.