Welcome to Café Monteverde

We recently got our hands on a copy of the 30 minute DVD, Café Monteverde: Hacia un Comercio Justo, which profiles Cooperative Santa Elena, Costa Rica’s first sustainable coffee project, started in 1989. We’ve got a special interest in the coop, since we’re serving their coffee, Café Monteverde, in our café. That coffee is coming to us via Texas Coffee Traders, so we literally know the guy — RC — who deals directly with the coop farmers of Santa Elena.

The video opens with a beautiful montage of the lush forest where the coffee is grown: shots of shiny red coffee beans still on the trees, children of the coop members playing soccer, and roasted beans so visually rich you can practically smell them.

To frame the story, we get a glimpse into the life of Dinia Santamaria. Dinia lives with her father — coop member Edwin Santamaria — and her best friend Silvia, who joined the family when Dinia’s mother died. The girls work on the farm and Dinia is writing a paper for school about the meaning of fair trade coffee and all the benefits associated with it.

Edwin, a resourceful jack-of-all-trades, is farmer, cook and carpenter, making furniture from the coffee wood. The latter is focused on to emphasize the coop’s use of all of the coffee plant to minimize waste and maximize output. For example, waste is composted with the help of worms. And after the beans are peeled, the hulls are used to make paper products including the bags that hold the roasted coffee. As with the farming, the papermaking is done without harmful chemicals.

Dinia learns from the adults in the coop about short term and long-term benefits of organic, sustainable farming. Foregoing agrichemicals can mean a smaller, more expensive crop. But over time, the preservation of the environment is, of course, better for the planters and for the planet. Also, though the market for their organic product is a relatively small piece of the overall coffee pie, organic product demand in general is growing. As long as they can keep the coop going and maintain a steady price, then they can also maintain a realistic hope for security and a stable market in the future.

The benefits for the workers are multiple. Nicaraguan workers travel to Costa Rica to pick the coffee, generating employment for families that desperately need work. The money they earn helps improve their lives not just through providing a means for food, shelter and transportation, but also through scholarships for their children. A future goal for the coop is to have all proceeds directed toward education.

It’s a great little documentary. People talk a lot about wanting to know the source of their food. They voice a desire to feel connected to the folks who produce it. In thirty short minutes, Café Monteverde: Hacia un Comercio Justo offers a tremendous reminder of the importance of fair trade and how, in return for paying a premium, we aren’t just getting an organic, high quality product, we’re actually helping others earn a fair living and survive.