Known for its sprawling rainforests and exotic wildlife, Costa Rica is home to some of the best coffee plantations. It is actually the only country in the world where it is illegal to farm coffee that is not 100% Arabica, which is often seen as the highest quality coffee species. These South American coffee beans are a vital part of our Seattle Signature Blend, and many people don’t realise what a special addition they are to the recipe.
Even though Costa Rica exports 90% of their coffee yield, they produce less than 1% of the world’s coffee beans. The limited supply coupled with the strict coffee-farming laws of the country, means you pay a high premium for Costa Rican coffee beans. But, you get what you pay for!
At Seattle Coffee Company, we source from over 7900 farms across five of Costa Rica’s eight growing regions. That sounds like a huge amount of farms, but the reason for this is that many of the coffee farmers are small-scale entrepreneurs. This means farmers are not able to turn out huge quantities, but it does give them the freedom to experiment with unique processes and rare varieties. This is one of the reasons why the country is famous for its specialty coffees.
Honey Processing
One of the processing methods that originated in Costa Rica is “honey processing”. The term “honey” doesn’t refer to actual honey, but rather to the sticky, sweet layer of mucilage (a sugary substance) that surrounds the coffee bean after the the skin is removed.
Initially, removing the mucilage from coffee beans required fermenting the beans and then washing them with water. Nowadays beans can be mechanically washed, which means that they are scrubbed by a machine. Because the process is mechanical, producers can vary the amount of mucilage left on the bean, which results in the various honey processes. The more mucilage left on the bean, the sweeter the coffee will be with more complex acidities.
Besides producing interesting flavour profiles, mechanically washing coffee beans is also much more environmentally friendly than the traditional fermenting and washing technique. The process requires less water and the water can be filtered and reused.
Small-Scale Farming
Coffee farming in Costa Rica is a community effort, and you’ll often find multiple family-run farms working together to get their beans ready for shipping. Independent coffee farmers in Costa Rica would never be able to reach an international market if they worked alone. Their yield would not be enough to fill a shipping container, and they would not be able to afford the export costs. This is why many farmers share micro mills, which are family or community-oriented coffee cherry processors. Farmers also form cooperatives or associations to share costs and combine their yields for shipping.
Coffee Laws
In recent years, as Costa Rica has moved from an agricultural to a service economy, coffee farms have started to rely heavily on migrant workers from Panama and Nicaragua during picking season. As a result, the country saw the need to protect these workers. In Latin America, Costa Rica has one of the most inclusive social policy regimes and access to health care services for migrant workers.
Often, coffee pickers have no option but to bring their young children with them across the border during the picking seasons. This has led to the founding of organisations such as the Casa de la Alegría project, which offers infant care centres and a safe place where the children can be looked after while their parents are at work.
Costa Rica is also well known for Law 2762, which is known as “The Coffee Law”. It’s the only country in the world that has a law like this, and it demands price transparency and an ethical production model to ensure that every person in the coffee supply chain gets what they deserve. So you can rest assured that every bag of Costa Rican coffee has been obtained through fair practices.
The Future Of Costa Rican Coffee
Unfortunately, as more Costa Ricans move towards white-collar work, and the tourism industry pushes up real estate prices, many farmers are selling their land to be redeveloped into residential or commercial property. Coupled with this are the effects of climate change. By 2050 over half the current farmland in the world won’t be suitable to grow coffee anymore due to a lack of rainfall and rising temperatures.
This is worrying from an agricultural perspective, but also from a cultural perspective. If the loss of coffee plantations continues at its current rate, the world will be losing many unique coffee varieties and growing regions.
The flavour, depth and richness of Costa Rican coffee is hard to replace, and the unique growing regions will not be able to be replicated in other parts of the world. Hopefully, if people keep supporting the Costa Rican coffee industry, especially small independent farmers producing specialty coffee, we won’t have to!
