El Trapiche is a small farm that has turned its main focus
away from large-scale agriculture production to agro-tourism that aims at
showing visitors a representation of early Costa Rican culture. The tour takes about two hours to go through
and explore coffee, coca, and sugar cane production. On the tour you see the stages of coffee production from the growing process, all
the way through to roasting. One learns the difference of how minutes in the
roasting process can make a light roast turn to dark roast. The location started as a full running farm
but the family soon had to change its gears when tourism, more specifically
ecotourism came into play in the Montverde region. Before the family worked on
producing enough coffee and sugar to sell and make a profit off of, now they
work towards teaching and producing only enough products for customers to purchase
on the tour. Although the family run
business has done a good job, it is making changes because of the changes in
economic structure of the community.
The company has also made changes that affect them socially. With tourism becoming the main income for most locals, many see and have more opportunities due to the increase. The younger generations do not see the need to have low income-farming jobs when they have the opportunity to go to college and get a higher education. In order to get enough work and be able to afford so many workers the company has had to hire Nicaraguans who are willing to come in and work for lower wages because of unjust in there own country and the willingness to work for much cheaper. Even though this is a small example it plays as a larger example to the whole Montverde region. Many more people are becoming higher educated and since the community of Montverde is so small it only has the capacity for so many “locals” to move back to the area and find a well paying job. El Trapiche is also facing environmental challenges due to the sheer number of tourists that visit the area and the effects that the industry has begun to create to the area.
The company has also made changes that affect them socially. With tourism becoming the main income for most locals, many see and have more opportunities due to the increase. The younger generations do not see the need to have low income-farming jobs when they have the opportunity to go to college and get a higher education. In order to get enough work and be able to afford so many workers the company has had to hire Nicaraguans who are willing to come in and work for lower wages because of unjust in there own country and the willingness to work for much cheaper. Even though this is a small example it plays as a larger example to the whole Montverde region. Many more people are becoming higher educated and since the community of Montverde is so small it only has the capacity for so many “locals” to move back to the area and find a well paying job. El Trapiche is also facing environmental challenges due to the sheer number of tourists that visit the area and the effects that the industry has begun to create to the area.
Clean water supply is also an issue in the Montverde region
because the community did not plan on the capacity of so much tourism that
their water supply is depleating quickly and without a means of replenishing or
usage change. Large hotels are coming into the region and buiding large pools and spas that they advertise but the infrastructure of Monteverde cannot support to fill all of these pools and the high numbers of tourists that come and shower and go to the spas.
On a tour of the farm we had a guide who asked us at first
if any of us spoke Spanish because he wasn’t that good at English. We went through the tour and had no problem
understanding him and were able to explain everything to us with no problem. I
think that this shows a big change to the area and how English is becoming a
more predominant language and how more Costa Ricans are able to speak it and shows
the education rates.
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| Having too much fun |
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