Coffee: A Love Affair

18 November 2009 at 07:04 karlbaumgarten 13 comments

By Karl Baumgarten, KF9, Costa Rica

4,000,0000 cups per year. 10,958,904 cups per day. 42 beans per cup. 460,273,968 beans per day. And they all have to be picked one by one by one. My fingers hurt just thinking about it. Every cup we make is the culmination of an incredibly involved process that we all should appreciate.

Below is a video of the coffee process at AsoProLa, an organic coffee company which processes coffee from small scale farmers in Altamira, many of whom have micro-loans with FUDECOSUR

Music by: JPMounier Introduction video: Coffee Insitute (1961)

Last week, I had the pleasure of accompanying David, a credit officer with FUDECOSUR, to Altamira for the monthly credit committee meeting. Altamira is a small village bordering la Parque de La Amistad, a National Park straddling the Costa Rican-Panamanian border still yet untouched by the hop on-hop off tourist brigade that covers so much of this small country. Altamira is coffee country, where the altitude helps cultivate a rich Arabica blend and the lack of oxygen ensures a light head to go with it.

David navigating our way through the backroads of Parque de La Amistad

Each month, David travels 4 hours to reach Altamira and meet with the credit committee, a group elected by the people of Altamira to run the village bank. The village bank is funded and supervised by FUDECOSUR where David oversees new credit disbursal and interest and principal repayments. The meetings take place at AsoProLa, an organization working to educate coffee producers and promote rural tourism. Every meeting ends just the way it should in Altamira, with good company and a strong cup of coffee, 2 heaping spoonfuls of sugar for the ticos, black for me.

The Altamira credit committee enjoying a well deserved cup of coffee after the meeting.

Please consider asking your local coffee house to support the small-scale coffee farmers it relies on. They can do this by making a loan on Kiva.org or creating a lending team to promote their business and social awareness. You could also convince them to place a simple print out of a Kiva borrower profile near their cash register to help garner support for Kiva.org and small scale farming. If you are interested in the work FUDECOSUR is doing in Southern Costa Rica, please join our lending team, Friends of FUDECOSUR. You can support coffee farmers in Latin America by browsing the current fundraising loans here.

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Karl Baumgarten is serving as a Kiva Fellow working with the new field partner FUDECOSUR in San Isidro, Costa Rica

Entry filed under: All, blogsherpa, Costa Rica, FUDECOSUR, KF9 (Kiva Fellows 9th Class). Tags: blogsherpa, coffee, coffee farming, Costa Rica, FUDECOSUR, KF9, microfinance, organic, organic farming, San Isidro, village bank.

Connecting through prayers ‘Tis Someone’s Season To Be Jolly

13 Comments Add your own

1. Microloans & Coffee | Seattle Coffee Gear Blog | 10 May 2011 at 16:43

[...] an example of how such a program can positively affect the coffee agriculture business, check out this great blog article on Kiva that shares the impact of its program on coffee farmers in Costa Rica. Posted in Articles, [...]
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2. Happy National Coffee Day from Kiva « Kiva Stories from the Field | 29 September 2010 at 15:10

[...] I leave you with a video on coffee produced by Kiva Fellow class 9 alum, Karl. [...]
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3. Alli | 4 August 2010 at 06:30

Hi! I spent time at AsoProLa last summer while studying in Costa Rica. I’ve walked the fields shown in your video, seen the drying tables and sat around the tables Poncho designed. Is it possible to get Madre Tierra coffee in Texas? Apart from wanting to support this incredible business, it’s the best coffee I’ve ever had and I’d be willing to pay a small fortune for it.
Thanks!
Alli
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4. Amy | 20 February 2010 at 17:28

Thanks, Karl, for giving me an excuse to ask my local Starbucks manager to support Kiva. And, people, also take note — FUDECOSUR has encouraged its clients to adopt organic farming methods, thereby helping us all by caring for the Earth.
Amy
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5. coambse | 23 November 2009 at 23:20

Hey Karl,

Fun post. While I don’t drink coffee I can certainly appreciate the coffee shops for all the time I have spent studying in them.

Keep up the good work.

Ed
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6. Alana Solimeo | 22 November 2009 at 08:41

Karl! Awesome video! Bring some yummy coffee for Friday morning aka Thanksgiving turkey hangover day!
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7. Kimia | 19 November 2009 at 06:38

I love the video! I had no idea the beans were berries, very interesting to see the whole process!
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8. evacwu | 18 November 2009 at 18:19

Awesome post & video! Thanks for sharing the http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961 link – that site looks like a really great creative resource
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9. Mary Riedel | 18 November 2009 at 17:48

Great video Karl – really really wwell done!
and to think today was the day(after feeling calm from my new yoga video) I went without Coffee to see how it went….maybe tomorrow
I’m chomping at the bit now!
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10. anne | 18 November 2009 at 14:36

http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961

HAHAHA I loved it. And informative too.

I can’t start the day without my 12 cup pot of French Roast. yeah you read right.. 12…cups…of espresso strength…

I will look for FUDECOSUR the next time I make a loan.
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11. karlbaumgarten | 18 November 2009 at 14:24

Haha…maybe a this magic 60s coffee promo video will change your mind…http://www.archive.org/details/ThisisCo1961
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12. joshpwilcox | 18 November 2009 at 13:43

Sweet, didn’t realize how dependent the CR economy was on coffee exports. Great portrayal of the entire process. Too bad I can’t stand drinking the stuff, ha.
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13. Marsha | 18 November 2009 at 08:59

I need a cup of coffee NOW. Great video, great bus stop. My next loan will be to a coffee grower.
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