bananas:banana industries "go green"

There are banana smoothies, splits, breads and more. Acres of rainforests are cut down to make banana plantations. The workers spray several pesticides and herbicides to keep away fungi, weeds, and pests from eating away at the disease prone banana plants.

Most of the world’s bananas are grown in Central and South American lowlands. Sales in Costa Rica have been rising steadily over the years. The idea of implementing a more environmentally friendly way of producing bananas is gaining popularity. Standard banana plantations will tie plastic bags around the buds to protect the fruit. But these pesticide-covered bags tend to end up in watersheds and rivers, sometimes clogging them. Today almost all banana growers in Costa Rica are using the bag recycling programs. Dole recently signed an agreement with the government of Costa Rica to produce a carbon neutral supply chain for both the bananas and pineapples grown in Costa Rica.

People are working on producing completely organic bananas in the near future but there is an airborne fungus that shrinks the bananas and then finally kills the plant. Right now we only have powerful fungicides that can fight that disease. There have been fertilizers that have been developed that have been able to minimize the disease. The overall goal for banana producing businesses should be to achieve sustainability. They can’t just reduce the use of these chemicals they also need to focus on good working conditions etc for the farmers.

coffee: inside Cafe Britt

The Coffee Tour at Café Britt was a very fun, but also an educational step into the world of gourmet coffee. This is a very important and prestigious crop for Costa Rica.

They took us on a tour through their staged coffee farm visiting their working plantation and roastery. We learned about the sustainable growing practices they use and how important coffee is in both Costa Rica’s social and economic development. We visited the roastery where people were working and packaging coffee. They also taught us a quick, food network type version of professional coffee tasting. I volunteered and was able to get a hands-on lesson of how to be a professional coffee taster. Coffee testing needs to be done by experts. They need to have very strong senses to get the job done. They test and inspect the coffee beans to make sure they are quality. There are lab tests done to make sure it passes certain assessments for example chemical and physical. The quality assessment and analysis is done by the experts that go through a long process to qualify as a coffee testing expert. They test for things like moisture content, black-bean, sour-bean, and broken beans, also other important aspects like the size.

Café Britt is a promoter of organic farming in Costa Rica. They started this program in the early 90’s and it has been successful in enabling organic coffee farmers to make certain that the water, soils, and biodiversity are all preserved. "Café Britt is a service company. We focus on people and we want to positively impact their lives. Which people?Our coworkers, our customers, our suppliers and our community." - Pablo Vargas, CEO

Café Britt works on projects that focus on sustainable Fair Trade practices. They work with small farms on educational projects focusing on sustainable growing. Café Britt also focuses on environmental conservation working on protection and preservation of biodiversity.

Once it was time to harvest the workers at Café Britt would fill their basket with about 25 pounds of coffee. Once they went through processing, the weight reduced significantly. I was able to see that very well when I volunteered to be a tester. The guides said that people might even suck the juices out of the coffee because they are fruits. They said to be careful because this fruit from the bean is in fact a laxative. Café Britt harvests the fruits once they are ripe. They make sure they do this in the same day or else the coffee might develop a bad taste. They take them to the plants and put them in a machine. This machine takes some of the skin off of the bean and then the beans are washed releasing the second layer of skin. Once they get the layers of skin off they need to dry the beans. There are a few ways in which they can do this: one which is free or buy using a drying chamber. Of course the free way of drying coffee is through the use of the sun, which is very time consuming. The other way is expensive and could have possible machine problems. They can also replant the seeds if they don’t think they are quality, they do this my putting them into soil and placing banana leaves on top.

personal:May 24-26 weekend adventure :)

I’m sure all of you are dying to hear about my amazing weekend. We started off with class that Friday morning, so as you can imagine our attention wasn’t at its best. We made it through class and lunch at the university then we left for Arenal. We got to our hotel, which had a perfect view of the volcano. We headed over to the Baldie Hot Springs. The whole area was gorgeous. There was a waterslide into one of the hot springs and it was pretty intense…thought I lost a contact, but I didn’t! The scenery around the hot springs was absolutely gorgeous. There was also a swim up bar in one of them. Some of us even "manned up" and got into the hottest spring at 152 degrees. I'm not going to lie, it was actually painful. We were all worried about going all the way under and that ended up being the least painful part. They has massage tables set up all around that hot spring, they were really cute and had the towels folded like birds. They seem to do that at all of the hotels like they do on cruises. We ate dinner there and the food was soo good!

On Saturday we went to La Fortuna waterfalls. We rode horses to get to them, and I think this is when my camera broke :( It was an awesome experience and I was able to recover the pictures from my disk. We were oblivious to off limits signs, so we were able to go behind the waterfall, it was amazing. After that we went to Arenal Park where hiked around and saw the volcano. Neither words nor pictures can capture how beautiful the view was from the lava flows. The power went out that night all over town so we had to use candles and flashlights to get around. Because it was dark everywhere, we were able to see the top of the volcano light up. J
The next morning we took a boat jeep to Monteverde. We then took busses up to our hotel on a very bumpy ride. The whole ride was sooo beautiful, I don’t think I have ever seen anything like before. We went on a canopy tour and the zip lines were awesome. The view from the zip lines was also gorgeous...I know I have said this multiple times, but everything we saw was unreal (in a good way). That night we went on a night tour of the reserve with our guides and saw several bats and other insects.

We were up bright and early on Monday for a morning tour…530 AM. I am glad we got up because some of us were able to see the Quetzals which are brightly colored birds of the trogon family. They are found in the tropical regions of the Americas. We saw them in the cloud forest where people might visit multiple times and never spot a single Quetzal. We saw both male and female Quetzals. We didn’t end up going to the cheese factory, but I think we were all pretty worn out.

personal

I just got back from the BEST WEEKEND ever a litte while ago. It is still very surreal to me. Pretty bummed because my camera broke, but I should be able to get my pictures off of the memory card. I will blog about this weekend very soon, but I want to try to get the pictures up and working. I just wanted to thank everyone for keeping up with my blogs! It truly means a lot to me and I want ALL OF YOU to be able to experience what I have been so lucky to have experienced. There is still soo much more to come!! I love and miss all of you so much!! Oh and aunt laure you should have jack and pete show you all of my albums on facebook and whoever else has access. LOVE YOU!! Oh and not to make any of you jealous or anything but we are leaving bright and early to go to the beach while our professors are in $%&$ :)

ecotourism

I ¨borrowed¨ this picture from the internet



Many Third World countries are focusing on quick industrialization and urbanization, but Costa Rica turned to ecotourism as its key to economic development. Even though Costa Rica is a very small country, about the size of West Virginia it still has great biodiversity including lush rain forests, volcanoes, scenic beaches, and exotic wildlife. According to a case study by TED, the nation’s tourist industry brings in about 1 million visitors annually and generates approximately $1 billion a year, making it Costa Rica’s second largest source of income. The research I found for bananas and ecotourism has some conflicting information so I will better inform you once I myself hear information from their known industries. I found that in terms of bringing in foreign currency, tourism is only second to the electronic components sector led by INTEL (which we saw today) and earns more foreign exchange than the nation’s former staple exports, and coffee and bananas combined. The expansion of ecotourism has definitely boosted Costa Rica’s overall economic development. It has allowed for employment opportunities to new areas and other general economic benefits to the local communities and the economy in general. As Martha Honey, the author of Ecotourism and Sustainable Development: Who owns Paradise? and former resident of Costa Rica, puts it, "They do ecotourism very well in Costa Rica." (Egan, 2001). I am anxious to see what I hear firsthand about ecotourism in Costa Rica while we are visiting.



¨As Katrina Brandon of the Nature Conservancy describes it, in its ideal form ecotourism would¨...
1.Provide valuable financing for parks and conservation efforts,
2.Serve as economic justification for the preservation of nature parks and wildlife,
3.Reduce exploitation of conservation areas by supplying local peoples with viable economic alternatives,
4.Promote environmentalism and conservation, and
5.Encourage private conservation efforts (Lizano, 2001).

Bananas

I am interested in learning more about the banana industry in Costa Rica because as I am researching I’m not finding as much information as I expected to find. The banana industry has been named the number one foreign currency earning industry in Costa Rica and is continuing to expand to meet the needs of a growing international market. I am really having trouble finding interesting information about bananas in Costa Rica so I will post more once we visit Chiquita and the Organic Banana Plantation. I did find articles about the banana industry “Going Green” but that is almost expected among businesses today.

Production:

Banana plants are the largest herb in the world. A banana plant will continue to grow from the same rhizome, which sends up multiple shoots. A rhizome is a plant trunk and these are used to make new banana plants. The workers will select the shoot that seems the best or healthiest to be the next plant to produce. They will eliminate all of the other banana plants. After about 6 to 8 months the plant will develop a stem that has a large bud. There are little flowers in these that will grow to become bananas. During this whole process the plants are fertilized and protected from diseases, insects, etc. The fertilizer must be approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union.

personal:Cafe Britt etc

This is my home stay...thought you would like to see where I have been living...there are three gates we have to unlock and then finally our front door...

This is at Cafe Britt where I volunteered to be a taste tester. Ñ smily face ha This is the more commerical way to make coffee...

Hanging out at the coffee plantation...De La Cafe Tal ..the ¨family¨coffee plantation

Where they dry the coffee beans

Hiking through the plantation to taste her coffee

A view from De La Cafe Tal...pretty sweet... I wish it wasn´t so foggy so you could see how beautiful it was!

Last night we went to our community bar El Pescadito, they love us there! Not to change the subject...but the guys just asked me how often I view this certain website, I had never heard of it so they told me how awesome it was and to look it up. I´m sure you can guess where that went... Anyway, back to that bar...it is fairly scary, when you want to enter or leave one of the workers has to buzz you in. They tell us it is safe there, but there was a homeless man passed out near the entrance (Don't worry we are being safe). Heidi and I left early again being the good students we are. :)

Today we went to Cafe Britt...soo much fun!! It was really neat to see the differences between a "family" type coffee plantation and once that is more commercial. I talked about the family plantation in a previous blog. It was really cool because it seemed very natural. We had to literally hike up and down through nature. We saw banana trees and coffee beans. (fruit) We then saw where they dry out the beans. As we hiked back to our bus we saw people actually picking the beans etc. As I mentioned before, we went to Cafe Britt today. It was DEFINATELY a touristy place. I will add pictures to show the differences between the more natural vs. the paved coffee plantations. Even though Cafe Britt seemed very commercialized and geared towards children perhaps we still learned about the coffee making process. The tour guides were very energetic and fun and friendly. I actually volunteered and was given a sweet coffee bean picking hat! I went through a short coffee taste testing process and the coffee was delicious. I enjoyed it a lot more than yesterday’s coffee. After we went through the tour we had lunch there. The food was amazing...those of you who know would be very proud because I tried several new things. I mentioned that the chicken was falling apart quickly when my friend informed me that it was FISH!!!! AHHH… I had only taken a bite, if that and it was covered in hot sauce of course. But, I do suggest that everyone orders coffee from Café Britt…delicious! We are sooo pumped for our weekend trip!! TOMORROW! Ñ= haha that is a smiley face! LOveee and miss everyone! sorry if this post was a little crazy, I am tired and not really in the blogging mood. Ñ=

Coffee

Coffee is one of the industries we are focusing on while we are here in Costa Rica. Due to the topics are are studying it is important to discuss Fair Trade Coffee.
 Fair Trade assures consumers that the coffee they drink was in fact purchased under fair conditions. There is certain criteria involved to become Fair Trade certified. "Fair Trade for coffee farmers mean community development, health education, and environmental stewardship" (Global Exchange). Some believe we need Fair Trade more than ever right now due to the world market prices being so low causing farmers problems with maintaining both their land and families. This price fall in the coffee market has also led farmers to bankruptcy. To protect the farmers and their families restructuring of the coffee industry needs to happen. This is again where Fair Trade comes into play. It corrects the markets imbalances by having a guaranteed minimum price for small farmers harvest and encouraging organic and sustainable practices (some of our main focuses). 

Costa Rica was the first country in Central America to register coffee exports in 1840. It currently accounts for 11% of export revenues and employs 5% of the nation's labor force. Costa Rica is responsible for 2.6% of the world's production of coffee. There are currently 72,942 coffee growers in Costa Rica. Working with the Fair Trade market has positively impacted the environment in may ways. For instance, working with the Fair Trade market has impacted social development. I am interested in learning more about the personal experiences these industries have had as we visit more coffee plantations. 

personal:Pura Vida!

The ceiling was leaking at the bar haha..the picture is sideways oops!

The hookah

some of us at the bar

Hello again! The days are seriously blending together... so I'll apologize ahead of time if I repeat myself. Our schedule keeps getting changed around a bit, but it has been to our benefit in some cases. (cancelation of classes) We aren't worried about it, because the weekend trips are going to be awesome. The professors also decided to join our free days so a group of students are planning a trip to a beach. It looks like it may cost a little but you only live once. :) Yesterday's schedule was all over the place but I was able to rest for a little bit and then we went to a dance class. I still wasn't feeling very well and I was SOOO thirsty so I came over here and got some drinks and played facebook. I thought we were going to head home after the class but everyone else was more ambitious than I was feeling. We walked to this bar and paid a cover. We weren't very excited about that and they said you had to buy a bottle to sit in certain areas (like upscale bars). Nobody was up for a $45 bottle and I wasn't drinking so we were getting frustrated. Finally seats opened up and the bar starting getting busy. The music was awesome and they even played satisfaction...BRETT!!! The manager said we could sit upstairs if we got a hookah so we did. It was a lot of fun, but my roommate and I bailed out early.

Today we went to Alajuela to visit a coffee plantation. The woman was very proud of being an entrepreneur and she should be because she was just ranked number one in Costa Rica for the best coffee and second overall in Latin America. Quite impressive. We hiked around and saw some sweet plants and this crazy blue bug. We had samples of the coffee and I wasn't a huge fan. I burnt my tongue a little bit, being the impatient Emily I am. We got back late and had to eat quick to make it to our Spanish Survival Session. It was actually pretty fun and we had cake for Bob's birthday!! I took a restroom break during class and the doctor here found me again and said I looked a lot better and greeted me with a kiss. (Costa Rican style--on the cheek-don't worry Ryan ;) ) I will get pictures up soon, my cord is back at my home stay. Now I need to switch over and post about our industries. Chao!

personal:first few days!

Heyyy everyone!! I am not sure where to begin so I will start with my home stay. We live with Sonia and her husband. She speaks very little English and he speaks ZERO! It is quite interesting trying to communicate with them especially when he picked us up from the University. This will definitely be a great learning experience. Their daughter just had a new baby the day we got here so one of the grandchildren have spent the night each night. Their granddaughter did the first night and her first impression of me was walking in on me putting on my towel (ooops!!) That is basically all I got to see of her other than her sleeping when we got to the house for the first time. The next night Diego was at their house and he is PRECIOUS!! All of the little baby boys make me happy and sad... reminding me of the little monster!! We walked around San Jose and went to some neat places. One of our guides pointed out the tallest building which he believes is only 7 or 8 stories! We went to this beautiful Catholic church and I will post pictures when I can. Mom this is for you: they have cows everywhere decorated like our flying pigs! One of my girlfriends was used as a pigeons bathroom (in her hair and arm) that is always fun. **Sorry this is kind of randomly flowing but there is so much we have done and it is mixing together!! I was very surprised by all of the stray dogs! It is actually sad because you can tell that they aren't taken care of and they are really dirty etc. :( I am also very surprised by the trash on the streets.


























I am going to start a new paragraph to give your eyes a little break. The phrase "when it rains it pours" defiantly holds true here. I don't think I can explain how much rain we had. It was interesting trying to walk home in it, our umbrellas and rain jackets weren't enough to protect us. We went to an information session today about our weekend trips. I AM SO excited for these. There are so many awesome things we will do which I'm sure all of you remember me bragging about. I was on the computer today and was hunted down for being late to the meeting spot because I do not have a watch and the computer had the wrong time. :( But I made it and we went to CINDE. This is a nonprofit organization here in Costa Rica. My ADD mind just brought me back to earlier in the day when we went to the bank. The building was awesome and it was NOT your average bank. There was a lot of security and you sat in chairs waiting to exchange money. I really want to learn Spanish and wish I knew more before I came on this trip, but I also believe it actually makes everything more interesting/exciting. I am getting pulled away, but I will be sure to post pictures ASAP and call once everything is figured out. I LOVE ALL OF YOU AND MISS YOU SO MUCH!! (well you know who you are ;) haha) I wish everyone could be here with me enjoying the experiences. I love you!! Adios!