Panama Journal
By Jon Rogers, President
Rogers Family Company

Day 1 – Friday March 3, 2006
Today we leave San Francisco for Panama, a Central American country bordering Costa Rica to the northwest and Columbia to the southeast. In Panama, we have three coffee farms – called “fincas,” and my son Peter, head of operations for our company, and I, are heading there to tour them and make sure the fincas are running properly, to meet with workers, neighbors and business partners, and to plan for the future of our business in Panama.

We leave San Francisco International Airport at 6:15 a.m. and arrive in Panama City, Panama at 7:15 p.m. We taxi into town to a hotel on the Bay of Panama at the entrance to the Panama Canal. Watching ghostly ships silently slide by in the dark waters, we eat a quick dinner, before heading up to bed to be ready for our first full day.

Day 2 – Tuesday
We sleep in until 9:00 a.m. – that’s 6 a.m. California time – and prepare for a meeting with a neighbor to one of our farms. We taxi downtown to a nice hotel and feel out of place in our farm-trekking clothes. Our 85-year-old neighbor next our Santa Maria finca, is an interesting person and during our business talks we discover that he holds degrees from Stanford and MIT and was responsible for negotiating the transfer of control of the canal from the US to Panama on December 31, 1999.

We conclude our discussions and head for the small local airport, which is in the midst of a power outage. Ticketing, bag checking and all other necessary functions have to be performed by hand, but we still manage to make our 4:00 p.m. flight to the city of David, on the southwest border of the Gulf of Chiriqui. The country of Panama is just smaller than the state of South Carolina with a population of more than 3 million people. It serves as the land bridge between central and South America and due to the condition of many roads outside its major cities, flying is often the easiest way to get from one side to the other. The flight takes a little longer than an hour and once we arrive, we pick up our car and get to the town of Boquete just before 7 p.m.

Our first stop is the wet mill, which is processing coffee from our Santa Barbara farm. Until this year, we shared a mill with another local farmer using our equipment and his building. But because our coffee volume has increased, we outgrew the facility. We searched for a temporary replacement and found a mill that needed work. The owner needed our volume badly enough that he was willing to make some of the improvements we required, such as tiling the fermentation tanks. In the end, we sent 11 of our workers equipped with two electric power-washers to the mill for a whole day to clean it from top to bottom. Though it’s certainly not a state-of-the-art facility, we keep two staff present when our coffee is milled to make sure it is clean, and the mill does the job.

It is thrilling to stand here and see our Finca Santa Barbara coffee tumbling out of the pulpers. I can hardly wait to taste this year’s crop. After a full day at the mill, we check into Barry & Jane’s a complex of small guest houses, at about 9 p.m.

Day 3 – Sunday
The sky is clear when the sun peaks through the picture window overlooking the entire Boquete valley, which lies beneath the Volcano Baru. But soon the bajareque moves in, bringing a strong wind with it. The bajareque is heavier than fog and lighter than a drizzle, a kind of rain that I can feel hitting my face though I never seem to get wet. The brilliant rainbows it produces have given Boquete the reputation as the rainbow capital of the world.

Today is the day we walk to Finca Santa Barbara, our oldest farm on 90 acres of land. Five years ago the farm was a cow pasture with undernourished soil on steep mountain cliffs. Cliffs make up the majority of our land here and walking the property involves lots of climbing, which we do. We meet our staff of five at 9 a.m. Our first order of business is to designate the space for new workers’ quarters. Then we start climbing.

Our farm management group has done a fantastic job. Really, the farm is a garden paradise that also happens to grow fantastic coffee. The farm is completely organic and the coffee grows under a lush canopy of high and medium canopy shade – ideal for growing the highest quality coffee.
Contrary to farmers that grow coffee in the open sun, we’ve found our organic, shade-grown trees are healthier, more resistant to disease and yield nearly the same volume as coffee grown under direct sunlight. Plus, I think the coffee we grow tastes much better.

At the top of the Finca Santa Maria property, which lies at about 6,000 feet above sea level, is a windy point called Palo Seco – Spanish for ‘dry stick.’ The wind is so strong up here it’s difficult to walk across the crest standing upright. On the other side of the point is the 10 hectares of first-growth forest that our predecessors have left untouched. The area is dark, mysterious and incredibly beautiful, like entering an ancient cathedral in another world.

The upcoming crop year will be the first year that Finca Santa Barbara will yield a full crop. We will be picking and processing the coffee through the end of March, a step usually completed by mid-March. We complete the Santa Barbara tour at about 3 p.m. and move on to the Finca Verde.

About the time we bought Finca Santa Barbara, we bought this 10-hectare plot in Boquete with the intention of putting a wet mill on the site. In the meantime, Finca Verde now houses our fertilizer operation.

Finca Verde serves an important coffee-growing, as well as environmental purpose. When coffee is wet-milled, a byproduct is the skin of the cherry, which contains the coffee seeds. Disposing of the skins has always been a problem, and often times less environmentally conscious coffee processors have dumped them onto the ground or into a stream. We decided to explore a way to turn the cherry skins into fertilizer. At Finca Verde we have 38 fertilizer conversion beds, each 10-by-40 meters long, or about the size of a large swimming pool. We collect cherry skins form every wet mill in the area, add a byproduct from a local fish farm and some secret microbes, and turn the mulch over to our 400 million California red worms. In about six weeks, we end up with a rich, black soil that we use as fertilizer. This year we will produce about 2 million pounds of this great, nutritious soil-enhancer, which is all we use to fertilize our crops at Finca Santa Barbara and our other two farms.

Day 4 – Monday
This morning we go back to the wet mill to meet with the owner and to discuss our plans for the future. He is not interested in making the changes to the mill that we desire, but he does want our business. We tell him we need changes or we will have to take our business elsewhere and we leave it for him to decide.

On the way back to town, we stop at a mill that might be for sale. It needs a lot of work but has potential. We try to call on the owner who is not there, so we move on to our lunch meeting with our Panama management staff.

In addition to the plans for improving the quality of life for our workers on each farm, we discuss various day-to-day operational problems and opportunities.

Day 5 – Tuesday
We drive about 1.5 hours to Finca Las Brujas. The farm is 70 hectares (158 acres) with 25 hectares planted with coffee so far. We do not have a wet mill here so we have to truck the cherries over a very bumpy road to Boquete for processing. I am glad I don’t have to make the jostling journey every day.

We start by touring the newly finished workers’ quarters; then we walk the property for about four hours. Las Brujas is unusual in that it is very high and densely populated with trees, many of them first-growth and more than 300 years old. Our property is basically an ancient rain forest harboring some great coffee under a canopy that varies from high to medium to low. We have planted all available space we can plant on our property because we refuse to clear any more of the ancient trees.

Like Finca Santa Maria, this farm is also on very steep hillsides. After four hours, my legs feel like rubber. However, the scenery, with its breathtaking flora and fauna, makes the fatigue worthwhile.
At 6:30 p.m. we meet with the 31 small farmers who supply us with their coffee cherries. We pay the highest price in Boquete so we get coffee from the best farms and farmers. The focus of our meeting is on organic farming. Until we started Finca Santa Barbara, there were no organic farms in Panama. There also was a lot of skepticism among the farming community about changing its age-tested farming practices. But the success of Finca Santa Barbara is helping to dissipate some of that skepticism. Several farmers at the meeting are working with small organic test areas and are amazed at the yield and disease-resistance of those organic crops. We are encouraged that before long, many farms that supply Rogers Family coffee will be fully organic (using our fertilizer) and the rest will begin testing organic farming themselves.

Day 6 – Wednesday
We drive the three hours to Finca Santa Maria, stopping to check into our hotel room just before noon. Santa Maria is a large farm with 140 hectares (315 acres), and we will eventually be able to utilize just fewer than half of those acres to produce coffee. We bought the farm six months ago from an owner who had neglected the property for more than five years so, needless to say, it was in pretty bad shape. We had to remove quite a few Catimore trees that were poor quality as well as many other diseased trees. We have nursery housing 100,000 seedlings that eventually will be planted at the farm, along with another 100,000 to be planted in April.

It will take us about three years to get all 70 available hectares efficiently producing good coffee.

We spend time reviewing the wet mill, which needs a lot of work, the nursery and the rather abysmal worker facilities. We also review plans for the 20-unit worker quarters on which we will begin construction immediately. In addition, we are building a new six-room school, medical clinic and teachers’ housing, which includes kitchen and bathing facilities, and 20 more worker facilities in the future.

We end the day watching the company soccer team practice for a match with a nearby farm. We recently gave the team new yellow and blue uniforms, similar to Brazil’s national team uniforms, and new soccer cleats. I was told that the day we distributed the apparel many of the players slept in their new uniforms.

In addition, we learn that the soccer field is uneven and has a pronounced downhill slope so that teams are either playing uphill or downhill. We decide to enlarge the field and level it to improve the quality of play for our soccer team.

Day 7 – Thursday
We arrive at Finca Santa Maria from our hotel Dos Rios, about an hour from the farm down the bumpy road. We take a tour in an SUV of the northern border coffee areas, making frequent stops to check the status of the trees. We are careful to note their pruning, fertilization and the presence of the ojo de gallo fungus, which is harming many of the neglected sections of the farm. In six months of ownership, we have made great progress, but there still is a lot of work that needs to be done. Peter promises that in three years, all 70 hectares will look as good as those at Finca Santa Barbara. We cover all of the areas accessible by vehicle, and after lunch, set out on foot.

We begin by cutting through a large area of natural forest running straight through the middle of the property. Three-to-four-hundred-foot trees loom high above the lower canopy. The second canopy is made up of trees that look similar to those in California or Vermont. The lower canopy consists of trees 20-60 feet tall. Because the sun can’t break through the trees above, many of the lower canopy trees won’t survive. These forests are more beautiful than I can describe.

At the end of the day, we meet for 90 minutes with the 32 workers on our farm, mostly indigenous natives. We open by explaining our building plans for the 40 units of housing, the six-room school, the medical clinic and the cooking and washing area. Peter and Mario answer questions and make additions to the plans requested by the workers. Questions include whether or not the stove will have gas so workers won’t have to cut down trees for cooking fires, which it will, whether the current housing facilities also will be improved, which they will, and if the church congregation can meet in the school, which it can.

The workers say they are pleased about our plans to make the farm organic because they hear that several workers at a nearby farm have been treated for illnesses associated with fungicides and herbicides at a local hospital. Our workers know they will not face that kind of health risk at our farm.

I am very impressed with the men who attend this meeting. Though they perform manual labor, they are interesting and intelligent people. They are interested in improving their quality of life and are working hard to make sure that happens. These are people with real needs who have a sense of humor and a good attitude. They repeatedly express gratitude for what we’re doing at the end of the meeting.

Day 8 – Friday
We have a breakfast meeting with a neighbor who we hope has extra electricity to sell to us. Unfortunately that is not the case but we continue to have a good relationship with our neighbor.

After the meeting we pack up our things and make the long trip back to Boquete. Peter and I go to the local internet shop to catch up on our email and Mario goes back to the office to tend to the many administrative details necessary to keep the business running smoothly. We meet for lunch about two hours later and many locals stop by to greet Peter and Mario. Boquete is a small town and everyone seems to know them. I think it helps that we buy a lot of coffee from this community at higher than the market rate.

After lunch, we say goodbye to the office staff and drive the 90 minutes to the airport in David. We arrive in plenty of time for the 5:30 plane flight to Panama City, arriving at our hotel at half past 7 p.m.

Day 9 – Saturday
We board our plane to San Francisco and I am tired. The trip was long, memorable, fascinating, and I know the effort is what it takes to minimize our impact on the environment, to take care of our workers and to produce fantastic Rogers Family coffee.