COSTA RICA- Rita Aguilera (Womens Farmers Group-NEW)

Taste Notes:

Orange zest, toffee and cloves, dark chocolate finish, round and coating cup

Altitude: 1500 masl

Varietal: Villa Sarchi

Location: Los Robles, San Jerónimo Naranjo, Valle Occidental

Process: Full Honey

Doña Rita’s story about coffee begins four generations ago when her family began producing coffee.

For this reason, she even says that their passion for coffee runs in their blood. Doña Rita’s father was passionate about growing coffee, having inherited a small piece of land from his parents. With a great deal of sacrifice, effort, and hard work for the family, he slowly acquired more land. In Doña Rita’s view, coffee was fundamental to her family being able to move forward. The harvest was always sold to traditional mills, which made it hard to sustain as a model.

Then, in 2019, Doña Rita came to know of Bean Voyage, and has been training with them and starting a new phase of her journey in coffee, learning how to process her own coffee, and trying to receive a more equitable price. In this way, she is sustaining a family business with four generations worth of history in coffee.

In 2020, it was the first year Doña Rita processed her own coffee at her farm Finca Pergujal. This lot is a full honey, dried in the sun on raised beds. For Doña Rita, one of the most important aspects of her work is the conservation and protection of natural resources.

Therefore, she devotes a percentage of her land to the protection of the forest and fauna. In 2019 she grew approximately 180 species of trees native to the area between the coffee trees, giving a home to birds including goldfinches and toucans. Doña Rita’s land also has soil of volcanic origin, due to its proximity to Poás Volcano. Doña Rita firmly believes that the volcanic soil, the altitude, the temperature, the amount of rain, and the new varieties she is growing, combined with the love that her family puts into coffee, will lead her smallholding to produce very high-quality coffee.

Bean Voyage is a feminist, non-profit organization working with women coffee producers with the objective of eradicating the gender gap in farming communities.

The organisation created women-only discussion groups to strengthen the women producer’s confidence and create a safe space for them to share their experiences and support each other.

They have created communities like this in many areas of Costa Rica. They also do in-person and digital training involving a higher level of technology to track progress and test the farmers on their knowledge.

A huge part of the curriculum is focused on preserving biodiversity and the environment in general to tackle climate change and to produce more in adequation with the endemic ecosystems. Each farmer receives a minimum of 80 hours of training on 5 modules - farm finance, production, processing, quality analysis and gender/community.

Bean Voyage also work on finding better markets for the micro lots produced with sustainable partners and fair prices paid. And this is how we started this partnership. On average, smallholder farming families see a 300% increase in farm income from farm-related activities after joining Bean Voyage this is due to a better quality of the coffees but also better markets chains for the products.

If you want to know more about their program, please visit Bean Voyage’s website: https://www.beanvoyage.org