Costa Rica

Cost Rica is a neutral nation with 1st place in the global happiness index. It is one of the world’s leading social economies with the social economy accounting for 1/4 of its total production. Costa Rica, located in the middle of the Americas, loves coffee and is very proud of their coffee that there is a saying “People want to die and go to heaven, and coffee lovers want to die and go to Costa Rica.”

Coopetarrazú

Famous for producing the world’s best coffee, the Coope Tarrazú, a coffee producer cooperative in the Tarrazú area, has one of the most rigorous and transparent production processes in Costa Rica and also they have sustainability programs for their producers. Coope Tarrazú bring in all coffee beans from small hold farmers. Depending on the production process, we provide technical and financial support and also we pay fair trade premiums to support sustainability. Coope Tarrazú promote protection of the environment and social and economic development of farmers’ cooperative. Also they uphold honest labor standards and conditions. They have increased their reliability by acquiring various certifications on sustainability including Fair trade.

• Story of a Fairday Costa Rica Tarrazú SHB coffee producerCoopetarrazú of Costa Rica producing Fairday Costa Rica Tarrazú SHB coffee
  

• How are you? My name is Randal and I am an Arabica coffee farmer in the Tarrazú region of Costa Rica. I am 38 years old and head of household with wife and 3 beautiful children.I began to learn coffee farming from my grandfather who had been growing coffee since the age of 15 years. When I became 29 years old, I got to know about and joined Coopetarrazú, a fair trade coffee cooperative, as a member.

Land is very fertile since it is a site of volcanic eruption in the long past and the climate is highly ideal to grow coffee.

• Tarrazú where I grew up is and alpine zone with wonderful air and beautiful scenery. Tarrazú has population of slightly less than 40,000 and is renowned as the site of production of the highest quality coffee in Costa Rica.

• Since growing Robusta coffee is legally prohibited, we grow only Arabica coffee. In particular, our Coopetarrazú coffee is grown organically at the elevation of more than 1,500m, we are very proud that our coffee beans have firm density and are very healthy.

• Coopetarrazú, for which I am a member is a coffee farmers’ cooperative with 80% of all the members being peasant farmers with less than 4 hectares of land like me. Since it was established in the1960’s, this Cooperative is older than me. Although it began with slightly more than 200 households as the members, it has become a large cooperative with approximately 4,800 households in the Tarrazú region as members.

• We hold regular meetings to set coffee bean price for the given year and learn know-how and techniques to grow better quality coffees. Fair trade premium is distributed equally among all the members to offer assistance in their livelihood.

• I am responsible for livelihood of a family of 5 with the income generated from my coffee farm with area of about 3 hectares. I am proud that I grow my coffee in environment-friendly manner without the use of chemical fertilizers at all.

  I manually remove all the weeds around and pruning branches of the coffee plants in order to comply with the environmental standards set by fair trade.

• Coopetarrazú is like a father to small scale coffee farmers like me.It is because my coffee farm is the only asset I have and a wonderful venue of education for my children.

  “I mix plants with large leaves among coffee plants in order to generate shades. In particular, I usually plant coffee underneath large mango trees. By mixing various plants for cultivation method of generating extensive shades, there is substantially less erosion of soil even during torrential rain due to climate change since the soil has greater force to resist erosion. Moreover, this format of farming is also very helpful not only for coffee plants but also for birds to establish habitat.”