Day 7 – Coopedota

Today, we visited a coffee Coop in the small farming town of Dota called Coopedota. It is made up of 850 individual farmers, and Coopedota pays these farmers their fair share of the profits for their coffee cherries. The coop of then takes these cherries, processes and roasts them and sells them to large buyers like Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee. As a result of such cooperation, the Coopedota is able to produce an average of 50,000 bags of coffee each year. 

Coffee beans inat Coopedota

This is an effective method of organizing labor on this scale because even a small amount of coffee plants can be profitable, but the equipment for processing the plants can be very costly. Also, few customers want to buy so few coffee cherries at a time. The coop allows the farmers to work independently as they please without having to spent huge sums of money on equipment upfront.

To me, one of the most interesting factors that goes into the success of Coopedota is how socially growing coffee is not just a job or an activity, it’s a way of life of sorts. These farmers dedicate their entire lives to producing high-quality gourmet coffee to make a living. It’s a difficult job year-round and particularly stressful at times, but it is obviously rewarding and worthwhile for the farmers. In addition, the coop has taken steps to grow coffee sustainably. For example, they have implemented technology that reduces electricity consumption, they reuse their wastewater to water their pastures after filtering out the sediment out of their wastewater to create fertilizer and they’ve reduced their consumption of wood by 97% by using the parchment from the coffee bean instead. In a way, this reflects how the farmers view their work because it’s obviously not just a business where they try to maximize their profit, they want to create a sustainable industry that effects the environment around their homes as little as possible so that they can pass their knowledge of the practice down through the generations.