Coopedota
Coopedota has 850 members apart of its' cooperative, all of whom mostly keep in contact through meetings and letters sent in the mail. In a cooperative all members are on the same level. Power is not necessarily designated to one person, which can be looked at as a good thing or bad thing. When hearing a presentation from one of the general managers at Coopedota, he talked about how having a cooperative gives you the ability to pull knowledge from a variety of different people. So if you have a problem within your company, while you may not know the answer it is probable that the next person will. He also mentioned the fact that it isn't necessarily harder to make a decision for the cooperative. Everyones opinion plays a role in what happens when making a decision and at the end of the day this can be very insightful.
One of the biggest disadvantages is the fact that everyone always wants more money. However, the general manager talked about this more as it relates to expectations. Expectations can be good because it can help push a company to growth, but on the blind side some members can be blinded by the goals. The general manager mentioned that 11 members had left the cooperative in the last 57 years for reasons similar to the ones above. Another problem, similar to the problems that alot of coffee farms are facing around Costa Rica is getting the younger generation to join the coopertive. Much of the younger generation wants to go out and explore what the world has to offer instead of farming.
DOTA is a cooperative
If Coopedota was not a cooperative, I don't think they'd be functioning at the capacity they are currently functioning at. Many of the members in the cooperative are farmers that provide mostly ripe beans to Coopedota so that Coopedota can either sell or roast the coffee. If Coopedota was not a cooperative they would not have nearly as much access to coffee beans and therefore they would like be able to do a variety of things with the coffee beans because they wouldn't have as great of a yield as they do.
The green beans are spread out across a concrete pavement
and raked so that the sun can dry it
"Cuppers" or taste testers test the quality
of the coffee
Inside DOTA's milling plant:
Silo full of coffee beans
I enjoyed the detailed assembly line of what actually happens at these factories at the end. Does Costa Rica have one coopedota? It's rather large it reminds me of workers unions. I like there system in thew aspect that their is not really one head leader but they all feed and learn from one another.
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