Coffee Finca

James and I decided to spend a few days after the New Years up in the northern highlands of Nicaragua, learning about how much of the yummy coffee consumed at Starbucks and elsewhere in the U.S. really gets its start.



The finca we visited near Matagalpa has been an active coffee plantation since the late 1800’s when a German immigrant founded it. Today his descendents still own and operate the plantation, selling the coffee in Germany as well as at Whole Foods in the U.S. Like so much of Nicaragua’s exports, the Nicaraguan themselves do not control the resources, they simply work the land for the people who do call the shots. During a tour of the 500 acre plantation we saw thousands upon thousands of the bright red coffee fruit (called “cherries”), whose inner seed becomes the coffee bean. This particular farm grows high quality Arabica beans. Workers pick the ripe fruits, and put them in a bag on their backs.



They carry around this heavy sack, which when full weighs 100 lbs, all day and get paid about $3 per bag—which equals about $6-9 per day, for back-breaking labor carried out during the dry season, when Nicaragua is boiling hot. All together they employ about 250 people year-round, and up to 500 during the harvesting. Their incentive to continue this labor is not the measly pay, but the free housing for them and their families (in little huts for the permanent workers, a hostel like barrack for the seasonal workers) provided by the plantation, which keeps them on the plantation generation after generation, cut off from any big towns or cities where other employment might be available. This kind of dependency on the plantation has been widely practiced in Central America and elsewhere to keep the workers tied to the land.



The coffee processing system is fairly interesting—the workers bring in big sacks of coffee “cherries”, and then a machine takes the red outside shell off of them. The beans then fall into long cement “pilas” where the next layer, a filmy slimy layer is soaked in water for around 16 hours before the beans are moved through a channel, the water is drained away, and the coffee beans are laid out in the sun to dry. The drying can take between a week and two, depending on the amount of sunlight and good weather. After the beans dry the final “hull” shell is removed, and the coffee beans then look much like you see them in a whole bean form, except that they are a very light brown color before roasting. As in almost all of Nicaragua, the beans are shipped abroad for roasting and for final sale of the product in cafes and stores. For this particular finca, 85% of the beans go to America, 10% to Europe, and only 5% remains in-country to sell at the finca itself. The rest of the country cannot even afford to buy the coffee that they grow on their own land. It is very ironic to see Nicaraguans drinking this disgusting Nestle “instant coffee mix”, a bitter mix of coffee flavor and hot water, while their wonderful Arabica beans are exported.



We had a fun time at the finca, hiking deep into the forest, seeing toucans, snakes, and other wildlife while howler monkeys howled at us from above. We rode horses out through the working areas of the plantation and enjoyed some R & R near the finca’s pond. It was a really great experience to see the humble beginnings of this wonderful thing called coffee which I have enjoyed at least every morning since the beginning of college exams and term papers drove me to the coffee pot.