Cattle, coffee and chuckles

Costa Rica is a country I didn’t expect to visit. Not that I didn’t want to, but I didn’t think it was possible. But I have recently just landed back in the UK after an eight-day trip around the Central American country as an agricultural journalist. 

To give you some context I am a member of the British Guild of Agricultural Journalists and this automatically gives you membership to the International Federation of Agricultural Journalists. This doesn’t always sit easily with me as I don’t class myself as a true journalist. However, here I am. Or there I was. 

Imposter syndrome creeps in on a regular basis but I decided to push this aside and apply for a ‘trip of a lifetime’. I did not expect to be selected amongst a worldwide selection process, but hey I made it. Fast-forward to 18 October, and one other UK representative and I were boarding a plane. To say I was a little apprehensive would be an understatement. 

We were promised a full itinerary of farm visits, sloth encounters and lots of rain. Luckily for us, two of the three happened. I jumped off the plane not so fresh faced but enthusiastic all the same. A welcome dinner awaited us, and this was where all twelve participants met. Dinner was my kind of tea, with steak, potatoes, veg and beer. The company was great, the rain was light, and I knew I was going to be ok. 

The purpose of this trip was to jostle for a front row seat and scope out new stories. Now I am not so good at jostling but I am interested in stories, and the first one presented itself in the shape of a banana. Visiting a university banana production operation was a real treat. My stories are different from the stories told by more traditional journalists, and as worried as I was about their increasing fungus infestation due to climate change I was more interested to discover that bananas have families, that a bunch can contain well over one hundred bananas, and that cultivated bananas generally don’t produce viable seeds. Story number one. The university campus we visited after sampling the yellow stuff was called EARTH. On arrival the dean greeted us by saying welcome to Earth. 

Stories Unveiling

Have you heard of the Brahman cattle breed? As a cattle farmer myself I have. But it doesn’t stop me thinking they are one of the ugliest breeds out there, sorry. This farm visit really caught my attention. The farm had seventy-four enclosures, thirty-six bulls per enclosure, and each animal resided there for a total of four months, all raised solely for beef production. These fine chaps slept on sawdust and their own faeces. Sounds terrible right? But what a revolution as this by-product was then transformed into compost with the help of a bacteria additive, creating compost rich in organic matter for the sugar-cane industry. Story number two. 

Did you know that it takes roughly fifteen months to grow one pineapple? No, neither did I. This includes soil preparation, planting, growing and harvest. Did you know that pineapples are sold as fruit, but their crowns can also be used in compost or as a growing medium for oyster mushrooms, or as cattle feed? Nope, me neither. And did you know that the fibres from pineapples can be processed into a rich fibrous t-shirt? You guessed it – I didn’t. And that was story number three in the bag. 

Costa Rica has a landscape shaped by numerous volcanoes, several of which are active. These silent eruptors produce super-fertile soils, which make for excellent small-scale farming. Story number four. I tried a wide range of fruits that are not grown here in the UK. Some I have never heard of and some I could not pronounce. The unknown fruits of the world – story number five. 

Coffee is big business across the globe. Many of us are guilty of needing that caffeine fix during the day. But have you ever seen the hard stuff growing? I guess not. Well I had that privilege, up in the Costa Rican mountains. I’ll set the scene. Beautiful sunshine (even though it was the rainy season), a healthy spread of palm trees, undulating mountains and low-lying clouds and a plant so rich in colour you never would have known it was coffee. This variety had super red beans and a deep green leaf. The coffee cherries are harvested, processed, dried and roasted. Story number six. 

So, you can see that although I wasn’t jostling, I was quietly picking up stories left, right and centre. There was a good mix of journalists, each bringing different subject interests and expertise. The conversations flowed easily and there were plenty of chuckles. And now for the grown-up journalism. Costa Rica has a population of five million. It is a country rich in biodiversity, with many microclimates and just two seasons. The average temperature is 25°C, which makes for excellent growing conditions for many crops. They export pineapples, bananas, palm oil, cassava and coffee. They invest heavily in their workforce, providing free meals, transport and women-friendly shifts. The next generation is important to them and they love learning English. 

Do I now feel like a real agricultural journalist? Yes, I do. Because without these stories, without the knowledge exchange and fact checking how will our children learn? Am I happy to be a niche agricultural journalist? Yes, I am. Someone needs to claim the kids ag journo title. 

And if I didn’t have cattle, coffee and chuckles present on my trip I would not have had the courage to jostle. Even if it was just a little bit. 

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