Day one with Starbucks

Today was our first day with Starbucks. Starbucks was nice enough to fly down two people from Costa Rica: an expert on CAFÉ practices and their chief agronomist. They also brought in representatives from Cafcom, Guatemala’s 3^rd largest coffee exporter. Over the course of the day, we were pretty impressed with their openness and willingness to answer questions. Obviously, CAFÉ practices are a work in progress. The CAFÉ model is much different from what we’ve seen on Santa Anita and La Voz.

We visited two fincas (plantations) just outside of Antigua, called Finca San Sebastian and Finca Candelaria. Finca San Sebastian is 2,500 hectares and employs alsmots 200 workers (only 200 of whom are permanent). Of the 2,500 hectares, over 1500 are set aside for conservation. We’re not exactly sure what this means. Big game hunting? Hiking and camping? No farming? The farm has been family owned for four generations. There are several farms, right niext door in fact. Owned by brothers and cousins. The owner of San Sebastian is the head of the family and was there all day to guide us around the farm.

After seeing this plantation, it’s obvious that small scale producers are at a huge advantage. The coffee plants here look extremely healthy and are covered in coffee cherries. We had extensive talks with the agronomists about the difference in fertilizers, cycles, and irrigation systems. There were several experiments going on at any one time to get the highest yield out of the plants. Though not organic, all the coffee we saw today was shade grown (though some pplants had more shade on them then others, if you know what I mean). I can’t imagine that the 40 families at Santa Anita know this much about their coffee plants. This really causes me to question whether having the small producers go organic is the right thing to do. It’s more expensive and it puts them at a huge disadvantage to the large scale producers. On the other hand, it gives them access to a specialized market and premium prices.

We watched a video on San Sebastian. They obviously take environmental and social responsibility seriously, at least on the video. One interesting point from the video: no contracts with workers! We found out that the judicial system isn’t strong enough here to enforce contracts. Neither the buyers nor the producers like this. The video sort of spun it: everyone dislikes contracts because they’re just pieces of paper. Verbal contracts are, they say, stronger. Nice try. But, I guess you have to deal with the cards you’re given.

Tomorrow, more Starbucks!