I could never really find the time to write a decent blog post in Puerto Rico about my travels to different coffee plantations. I felt like anything I wrote down I would just be reusing for my final presentation and it seemed too repetitive. Instead, I decided to give a general overview of what I did in Puerto Rico.
In Puerto Rico I met up with Daniel O. Torres, owner of Gustos Coffee Company. Daniel gave me a tour around his San Juan facilities as well as let me attend a barista training class and a cupping. Later, during my two week visit to the island, I toured four plantations with Daniel as well as Mr. Jose Fabre Laboy, the ex-Secretary of the Department of Agriculture for Puerto Rico and Dr. Salvador Salas, a agriculture professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, and the Secretary of the Department of Natural and Environmental Resources for Puerto Rico. I was honored to be traveling with such knowledgeable people. We visited a variety of farms. Some were large and commercialized and others were smaller and family owned. Visiting the plantations and being able to see the whole growth and production process first hand was an invaluable experience. I discovered that coffee production in Puerto Rico is greatly declining. Many farmers are switching to different crops to get more of a profit, and others are just finding it difficult to hire people to work in the fields. The labor issue is a major problem in Puerto Rico right now. One of the plantation owners explained the crazy situation to me. Apparently people who generally work on the farms will be paid relatively the same amount by the government for not having a job. These unemployed people also receive a free cellphone and 250 minutes monthly from the government in addition to relatively cheap housing options where either water or electricity is paid for. This form of mass welfare has greatly hurt the coffee industry as well as other businesses that count on low wage workers for operation. The plantation owner says that as of now there appears to be no real solution to this problem.
Visiting Puerto Rico was a truly eye opening experience. I learned tons about coffee growth and production as well as the hardships plantation owners are currently facing. Growing coffee is a difficult business, and I can only hope that the new demand for coffee in China, Japan and India without increased supply will give these farmers the opportunity to sell their beans at a higher market price and perhaps stay in business.
