Sustainability at Playa Nicuesa

After my Earthwatch expedition was over, I traveled to Playa Nicuesa Rainforest Lodge with my husband to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary. Playa Nicuesa is beautiful-- the front yard is the Pacific Ocean and the backyard is the rainforest. As a true eco-lodge, they are doing some interesting work with sustainable tourism. Here are some highlights:

Construction
-Lodge buildings are on only 2% of the property.
-Recycled construction materials were used such as roof tiles and plastics made from recycled banana bags.

Operation
-Electricity is provided by solar energy.
-Solar drying room dries all laundry.
-Trash is separated into recyclables and compost.
-Trenches are utilized to manage heavy amounts of rainfall and reduce soil erosion.
-Gardens and landscapes are maintained without fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides.
-Organic-biodegradable shampoos, soaps, and cleaners are used.
-Meals focus on national and regional cuisine, with food grown on property or locally.

Community
-98% of staff are Costa Rican; most from local area.
-Playa Nicuesa assisted in creating a local recycling collection center.
-They display decorations and sell locally produced artwork and handicrafts in an effort to support the development of local artists.
-They sponsor a Costa Rican student to attend a local bilingual school.

They also are seeking to become certified as a carbon-neutral company, meaning that they do not input any carbon into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. Realistically, they cannot do this 100%. For example, they have to use boats for transportation and the boats can only currently run on fossil fuels. They buy credits to offset this carbon use. The credits support local reforestation efforts (trees are planted which help use the carbon their boats produce). This means less climate change.

For more information about sustainable tourism, check out http://www.sustainabletravelinternational.org/

Adios Santa Maria de Dota

Today was the last full day here and the last day of fieldwork. It was a tough morning- a very thick plantation in need of a lot of pruning. I couldn't sleep well last night- my brain kept counting. Today in the field, I broke my sunglasses, got stung by something, and thought I had ants crawling up my pants at lunch. Today we counted over 3,500 berries. My biggest single branch of berries this week held 320 berries and we estimate that we easily could have counted over 100,000 berries this week. It's been a lot of hard work, but I'm glad that I was able to help with the data collection and learn so much about coffee production and sustainability. I have mixed feelings about leaving. It's sad to say goodbye to my new Costa Rican and American friends, but I am leaving feeling inspired to share my newfound knowledge with others and be an agent for change at home. Thanks for reading! Check back in mid-July. When I return home, I plan to add more photos and thoughts.

Coffee Processing

So, how is the coffee processed?

1.Harvest- Farmhands pick coffee from December to March. Pickers are paid $1.30/cajuela and a good picker might pick 20 cajuelas/day. Costa Ricans work as pickers as well as immigrants from Nicaragua and Panama.

2.Transportation to the coffee mill- Farmers transport their coffee to the mill. It is promptly measured and checked for quality to make the coffee has been picked in the last 24 hours. If it has sat for longer, the berries would begin fermenting which would affect the taste.

3. Pulping- The coffee goes through a wet milling process. The pulp gets reused to make organic compost, which is given back to farmers. The coffee sits in its own juices and is allowed to ferment.

4. Drying- It is then dried for 24 hours in a machine or sun dried the traditional way for 8 days. Done this way, it has to be raked every hour to ensure even drying.

5. The coffee “rests”- The coffee is stored in silos until it gets to 12% humidity. This takes at least 2 months. The coffee bean still has several layers, which will later be removed, including the parchment. Later, when the parchment is removed, it becomes fuel for the dryers. This decreased their wood consumption by 90% when they began reusing the parchment a couple of years ago.

6. Final processing- The husk is removed and the beans are sorted using machines for quality by size, density, and color.

7. Packaging- Coffee is packaged to be exported for roasting. Roasting is done in a variety of ways and can change the flavor of the coffee.

8. Cupping- The coffee is checked for quality. A “cupper” smells the fragrance of the ground coffee, the aroma after steeping a cup, and the flavor. Each coffee is checked multiple times for consistency.

Coffee Calendar

November-March= harvest (November for lowlands; March= for higher altitudes)
April=pruning
May & June= applying fertilizers and herbicides
July-September=pruning shade trees
September-October= manage and control diseases from the rainy season (i.e. apply fungicides)

The Perils of the Field: Going Batty for Coffee

So, counting coffee may seem easy and safe to you, but it has its dangers. You already know about going to the bathroom in the field. Also, while counting berries, occasionally you come across critters like spiders, snails, and little bugs that get tangled up in your armhair. The red clay earth and wet rotting banana leaves make the steep slopes ripe for wipe-outs. And let me tell you about yesterday's adventure- BATS! Yes, in the middle of the day, a large bat came flying around our transect in and out of the coffee and banana trees, finally landing with 2 others, dangling upside down from the underside of a banana leaf. After much shrieking, I realized these flying rodents could be lurking under every banana tree. Wish me luck tomorrow....

RIP Miguel

In case you were wondering, Michael Jackson's death is all over the news in Costa Rica. One of our Costa Rican scientist hosts, Natalia, told us that her mother watched CNN for over 2 hours. Christina, another teacher, had her mother abruptly hang up from an international call, saying, "I've gotta go. The Jackson family is on the news." In honor of Michael Jackson, we blasted "Beat It" from the radio of the Land Rover we take up the steep muddy roads, which we affectionately call "La Tortuga Blanca" (the white turtle). A few people went to karaoke last night and there was a little tribute to Michael Jackson along with some Costa Rican moonwalkers.

Bugs, Bugs, Bugs (for Hunter and other budding entomologists)

There are two scientists here studying arthropods as indicators of biodiversity- Dr. John Banks and Lisa Hannon of the University of Washington. Insects and other arthropods are important for coffee farms and other agricultural systems for pollination and as biological control. Predators like spiders and wasps control some of coffee's pests by predation. Decomposers also return important nutrients to the soil. They are measuring the insect biodiversity (how many different species of arthropods in the area) as an indicator of the health of the coffee farm. In general, the more biodiversity, the better. They use two kinds of traps. One is called a malaise trap, which catches flying insects. Pitfall traps are basically a cup with soapy water that is stuck in the ground. When a walking arthropod passes it, it falls in and it can't climb out because of the soap. So far, they have been finding lots of parasitic wasps (see above). They lay their eggs in beetles or other arthropods. We have seen lots of spiders. Check out the "landing strips" that the predator spider has constructed in its web above. These mimic the "landing strips" that attract bugs to flowers. Smart, eh? One concern for coffee plants are an invasive species of beetle, called the coffee berry borer beetle. These beetles attack the beans, spending most of its life cycle inside the berry. This reduces the yield of the crop. It is very hard to control; pesticides do not work well since it is inside the berry itself.

Meet Shakira

The lab where we work in the afternoon has its own dog. Her name is Shakira. She is very sweet and likes to beg when we eat lunch. She even puts her head on my lap, like my dog Jimba. She pretends she is sweet, but really is trying to get your lunch. There are signs all over the lab not to feed her as she has gotten a little gordita from all of her human friends.

Counting Coffee in my Sleep (aka Fieldwork- Entry 1)

So, don´t think I´m starting my summer vacation and that I´m sitting on the beach; let me tell you about fieldwork. Today, while you were in class (working hard, of course), I was sweating profusely in the heat of the tropics, counting an endless sea of coffee berries, trying to concentrate as a variety of insects buzzed around my head and occassionally flew up my nose. The rain came early today as well. We have special "Rite in the Rain" paper for recording our data, that has a special coating on it to make water bead up so your notes are preserved. I have been working with Lucía the past two days. She is the only one of our 3 Costa Rican scientists that speaks limited English, so I have learned to say such things as "number of productive nodes" in Spanish. Finally, if I haven´t convinced you that I´m working hard, let me tell you about going to the bathroom in the coffee fields. You know it´s bad when it´s preferable to go outside than in the outhouse. Also, I did a scientific experiment today and determined that banana leaves make better toilet paper than coffee leaves.

So, let´s change the subject....what are the scientists trying to find out? They are trying to identify relationships between farming practices, coffee productivity (how much coffee is produced by a plant), and quality. Some of the objectives are to test these research questions:

• Does less synthetic fertilizer lead to improved soil quality, more production, and/or better quality?


• Does less synthetic herbicide lead to improved soil quality, more production, and/or better quality?
  Do differences among shade trees on the coffee farm (none, one species, multiple tree species) affect soil quality, production, and/or quality?

One thing we measured today was the productivity of a plant. We randomly sampled 10 plants along a transect and measured several characteristics. We counted specific characteristics, like how many branches produced fruit and how much total fruit per branch was present. Each fruit yields 2 beans. I´ll be counting coffee fruit in my sleep tonight. Data collection is important, but can be tedious sometimes.

Blame it on the Rain

So, it is the "green season" here, which basically means it rains torrentially every afternoon. On the first day in the Los Santos region, the rain began at 12:32 pm and poured so much that we periodically had to stop our orientation session for yet another coffee break because you could not hear the presenter over the rain hitting the metal roof. During one such break, I looked out the window to see several cows running down a steep slope as if they were headed towards the finish line of an important race. Our group of teachers and scientists decided to place daily bets about what time the rain would start each day and determined that the winner should get a plate of rice and beans (which we eat with every meal including breakfast). Yesterday´s winner was Sarah Riggen, a teacher from D.C. She had the exact correct guess- 1:36 pm. I guessed 2:32 pm for today, feeling optimistic, but actually the rain began at 11:33 am.

Rain Arrival Log
June 21- 12:21 pm
June 22- 1:36 pm
June 23- 11:33 am
June 24- 12:09 pm
June 25- 2:01 pm
June 26- 4:40 pm
June 27- 11:53 am

The Journey Begins

Appropriately, my journey began with a cup of Starbucks coffee bright and early on Saturday, 6/20. Coope Tarrazu and Coope Dota, the two coffee cooperatives we are working with sell some of their coffee to Starbucks. Instead of¨"community to cup", I am tracing the coffee backwards. So, what is a coffee cooperative? Farmers that choose to be members of a coffee cooperative sell their crop to the co-op. The cooperative is then responsible for finding buyers to export the coffee to other countries. Coope Tarrazú has 2,600 farmers as members. Coope Dota has 750 members. Of the 73, 000 coffee farmers in Costa Rica, 62% are in cooperatives. Farmers can sell their coffee directly to buyers, but belonging to a co-op can offer more security as well as offering social programs for the local community.

So, why is the Earthwatch team here? One of the big challenges to environmental sustainability is improving the roduction of the farm while decreasing its impact on the local ecosystem. During the "Green Revolution" of the 1960´s and 1970´s, Costa Rican farmers shifted from more traditional rustic farming practices to more intensive methods, where coffee was produced in full sun with synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Currently, there is more and more recognition that such intensive farming practices can be more productive in the short-term, but have long-term, serious negative effects on the environment. For example, in Costa Rica, coffee growing regions have some of the highest rates of several types of cancer associated with pesticide use. In addition, most of the coffee is planted on steep, eroding slopes. Seventy percent of the nitrogen fertilizer gets washed into the rivers as runoff, causing problems for aquatic ecosystems. This project was designed to help increase sustainable coffee farming practices in the Tarrazú region of Costa Rica, with the ability to be replicated in other farms and coffee regions.

Getting excited!

I am leaving in less than 2 days for Costa and I am getting very excited! I am hoping to write daily upon arrival so send me your questions. HB Seuss- I have a lot of your questions about coffee that I am saving until I arrive in Costa Rica. Keep reading and have a fun last week of school!

Where am I going?

Costa Rica is in Central America. Nicaragua is its border to the north and Panama lies at its southern border. I am traveling to the small town of San Marcos de Tarrazu in central Costa Rica. The word "Tarrazu" comes from the indigenous Huetar word atarrazu, which means 'rocky ground at the mouth of the mountain'. To see an interactive Google map of the region, click on http://www.earthwatch.org/exped/chandler_location.html

Welcome to my blog! This is a new adventure in technology for me. I was awarded an Earthwatch teaching fellowship and will be joining the "Costa Rican Coffee From Community to Cup" expedition on June 20th. I will be volunteering on a coffee plantation, helping as scientists work with farmers to incorporate more sustainable and earth-friendly practices in their farming practices. I am hoping to update this blog often both before I leave, during my trip, and after. So, please write to me with your questions and comments!