The Miracle at El Toledo Coffee Farm

Imagine this scenario: You’re a husband and wife farming team in Costa Rica. You have a small plot of land that provides enough to feed your two young boys.

Then, in the early 1990s, something odd begins: You get ill every time you apply chemicals to your plants. Stomach and headaches won’t allow you to get out of bed.

Chemical farming has become part of the culture in many Central American communities. Photo: Pixabay

Recently, American certification companies have been coming down, convincing you to practice organic agriculture. They promise that after three years of not using chemicals, you’ll get a hefty premium for your beans. Seeing it as manna from heaven, you join the movement.

But there’s a problem. Those certifiers only get paid if you sign up. That means that they oversold the promise of organic agriculture, without adequately preparing you for the rough times ahead. What happens when you quit chemical inputs cold-turkey in a mono-culture coffee farm?

Yield drops. Fast, and hard. At this particular farm, the harvest dropped an astounding 80%! Given the fact that you can’t go back to using chemicals because of your health problems, what do you do to put food on the table?

The Obstacle is the Way

This was the situation that Gerardo and Sole Calderon-Vargas found themselves in, roughly 25 years ago. They had two options: sell the…