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C
C offee production has never been an easy task and
the volatility of the prices does not assure that
farmers will be able to cover their costs and con-
tinue next season. Being a coffee farmer is an act
of passion rather than a stable business that will consistently
increase its revenue year after year. Now with the arrival of
COVID-19 to the producing countries, the uncertainty has
settled and many producers are not sure if they will have a 2020
harvest to offer.
Brace Yourself
The first coronavirus case was detected in Costa Rica on
March 6th, right after the 2019 harvest was finished. Fortunate-
ly, almost every producer had everything ready for their buyers
to cover this year’s demand. However, the global picture was
different and Asia and Europe were amid this pandemic without
knowing what was going to happen next. Was this situation
going to be over in a couple of months or will it last until a
vaccine is found and widely distributed? We don’t have the
answers yet and not every producer was lucky enough to sell
all their coffee also not at the price they intended. I asked the
same three questions to four different producing families, all
of them from the most famous coffee-producing region of
Costa Rica: Tarrazú.
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Daniela Gutiérrez, a young woman who runs most of the
milling process at La Montaña, part of their family business.
Mario Marín, also a young producer and third generation of
coffee producers whose grandfather helped funding COOPE-
DOTA, one of the most important cooperatives in the country.
Emilio Ureña from La Chumeca that special-
izes in natural and anaerobic coffee process-
ing and Bayron Quirós from La Joya, who This year they had to
started processing their coffee in the last
couple of years and started seeing promising send their samples which
numbers in order to export.
The first negative impact that produc- takes a long time and
ers encountered was the lack of visits from
potential buyers. During April, most of the this implies extra costs.
farmers are visited by their clients of poten-
tial ones and they have the chance to expe-
rience everything directly on the farm. The
plants, the mill, the views, the food, the relationship with the
farmer, and most importantly the cupping. Costa Rica shut their
borders almost immediately after the first case was detected
and that meant all visits got canceled. This year they had to
send their samples which takes a long time and this implies
extra costs.
There is Always an Opportunity
Now with the closure of most coffee shops and the con-
sumption habits getting modified by this situation, buyers de-
cided either to lower the volume of coffee they intended to buy
the case for Mario Marín, who doubled his production during
or they canceled their order. Interestingly enough, this was not
this harvest. His close relationship with the buyers allowed to
sell almost all his coffee despite being doubled because he had
a high demand from previous years. La Chumeca and La Mon-
taña had to lower their prices even to half their price and start
searching for new buyers.
Fortunately, a newborn phenomenon started in Costa Rica
thanks to the people working from home who decided to buy
coffee online and not from the supermarket. This opened new
possibilities to La Montaña with their coffee brand Don Lucas.
Their roasted coffee brand has always existed but they relied
on the income from the exports and not from the national
demand for roasted coffee. This shook their comfort zone so
they rebranded and started a social media marketing campaign
along with some important influencers and focused on the
internal market. Something similar happened with La Joya, they
focused on their roasted coffee brand since the coffee shops
that they sell their coffee to were closed. As per Mario Marín
with their brand Vara Blanca, so far they have multiplied their
roasted coffee sales by five, something never seen before. Cos-
ta Ricans now have the chance to buy coffee that would nor-
mally have gotten exported.
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