Coffee, Volcan Baru National Park and Dogs

Reuter’s carried a disturbing by Andrew Beatty article entitled . . .

Gourmet Coffee Eats Into Panama Forest

Panama’s gourmet coffees fetch record prices for their prized flavors but the strong demand is convincing some growers to clear land illegally and plant in one of the country’s few protected highland forests.

Last month, Panama’s Environmental Protection Agency discovered 40 acres of clandestine coffee trees nestled deep in the Volcan Baru National Park, sparking fears that more forest could be cleared as prices rise.

The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country’s “geisha” beans, often described as the champagne of coffee for their subtle jasmine-like taste highly sought after by boutique roasters from North America, Europe and Japan.

Now, sky-high prices for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park’s boundaries.

“There is a grave threat to the park. People do not respect laws and the (government) has not done its part to ensure compliance,” said Ezequiel Miranda, head of an environmental group in the western Boquete region near Costa Rica.

Last year a batch of the famed coffee fetched a world record price of $130 a pound in an international online auction.

While the coffee planted now only takes up a tiny fraction of Volcan Baru’s thousands of acres, the invasion could disrupt the wildlife living around Panama’s only volcano, including pumas, quetzal birds and rare orchids, environmentalists say.

“It was designated a national park to retain the biodiversity of the area. People know perfectly well where the limits of the park are,” said Harmodio Santamaria, an official from the government environment agency.

Many specialty coffee producers decry the practice of encroaching on park land, saying a few rogue growers are giving the geisha business a bad name.

Established growers in the region have built up reputations for running environmentally and socially responsible farms.

“This is certainly not what our organization or members are about. We really take care of the environment,” said Ricardo Koyner, president of the Panamanian Specialty Coffee Association.

“Production is growing, but it is growing very cautiously to ensure that quality is retained,” he said.

The Esmeralda Estate, run by Daniel Peterson, has coffee that consistently wins the highest auction prices, while being certified by the conservation group Rainforest Alliance as environmentally friendly.

Peterson says high-altitude land is becoming scarcer in traditional centers of geisha production, but expansion does not have to affect the national park.

“Around Boquete you might have difficulty expanding because of real estate developments (which have pushed up prices), but there is still a lot of suitable land between Volcan and the border,” he said.

The problems with Volcan Baru National Park have been around for a long time, and mostly they involve produce growers on the edge of the park who gradually push the boundaries of their farms into park land.

When I cruise on ships that go into the bay of Costa Rica in front of Golfito, they cruise around doing something called “scenic cruising” and the cruise director reads a narrative, obviously written by the Costa Rican tourism board. One of their amazing claims is that Costa Rica has more land set aside for national parks than any country in the world. That’s correct: Costa Rica has 26% set aside, and poor Panama has 25%. So Costa Rica’s record is not quite as stunning as the tourist board would have you believe.

The problem in Panama AND Costa Rica is that it is one thing to set land aside, and it is another to enforce the set aside. In Panama there is no budget for enforcement. In Costa Rica the problem is far worse.

Volcan Baru National Park surrounds Volcan Baru, one of Panama’s two inactive volcanos. [See my earlier post, Living Near A Volcano ] It is home to an amazing variety of plant and animal life including all of Panama’s five cat species ( ). There is a trail linking Boquete and Volcan (on the other side of the Volcano) called The Quetzal Trail.

Our coffee farm is on the slopes of Volcan Baru in a little crossroads called Palmira Central at about 4,100 feet overlooking the Gulf of Chiriqui.  The volcanic soil left by Baru hundreds and thousands of years ago is one of the things that makes our coffee so great.  That an the altitude, and the shade cover . . .  and my wife’s growing agricultural expertise.

Speaking of coffee . . . and expensive coffee . . .

A while back I received this note from Shirley . . .

Hello Richard–I found the attached article in our local newspaper about coffee beans being picked by monkeys & thought you’d find it interesting. I hope you can enlarge the print as it’s quite small. Hope all is well with ou & yoaur wife after the Panama cruise–really enjoyed your talks–it ceertainly enhanced the trip through the canal. Sincerely, Shirley Carscadden

From the VANCOUVER PROVINCE . . .

Monkey-picked coffee on sale in Vancouver Thursday

Vancouver’s 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters have enlisted the aid of some unlikely workers in Southern India to help harvest the best coffee beans — rhesus macaque monkeys.

The coffee critters, who work for peanuts, pick only the few sweetest beans from each plant, which they then store in their mouths for several hours while sucking on the “cherry” fruit before spitting out the inner bean.

Rhesus macaques pick and suck on the sweetest coffee beans’ outer cherry-like fruit, then spit out the inner bean that is later cleaned and roasted.

A worker then collects the spat-out beans and they are cleaned and roasted, making his job slightly better than the person whose job it is to collect the Kopi Luwak — Sumatran beans harvested from the droppings of civet cats.

“The wild monkeys seek out the sweetest cherries,” president Vince Piccolo explained yesterday after returning from a coffee conference in Minneapolis, Minn.

“It is like us eating an apricot and spitting out the pit. I find the coffee to be extremely sweet with low acidity.”

Only four or five sacks of the masticated beans called Indian SL 795 Devon Estates Arabica were produced and Piccolo got his hands on three of them, which he plans to serve as single-origin espresso and not blended with anything else.

The SL 795 will be available in the company’s Kitsilano store at 2152 West 4th Ave. beginning tomorrow.

“It is only in limited amounts,” said Piccolo. “This is a unique discovery and we want out customers to have great coffee.”

Piccolo expects the 12-ounce bags, which sell for $25, to sell out quickly.

To each his own! Personally I like our own home-grown, high altitude, shade-grown Arabica coffee, picked off our farm, sun-dried and roasted to our taste by our friends at Ruiz coffee.

Going to the dogs . . .

I had written earlier about Animales and the spa neuter program in Boquete.  I thought you’d enjoy some pictures I took yesterday as they were setting up for another spa neuter clinic on a very rainy day.

Here’s Ruby McKenzie, the guiding light behind Animales, setting up for Sunday’s clinic . . .

This is a volunteer operation.  There are many opportunities like Animales for service for expats who want to get involved in the life of the community.  Nikki has learned how to shave, give anesthesia shots, and help animals recover and is fascinated by this, yet another new interest.    They key to happy retirement in Boquete, and I suspect anywhere, is developing new interests and getting and staying involved.  War Babies and Boomers are not about to just sit and rock!

Operation underway . . .

Recovery station . . .

Dr. Robert Schuller says the secret of success is to “Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it.”  Animales has certainly been successful! The first spay neuter clinic was almost all animals owned by expats, and now the clinics are almost all animals owned by locals.