Every year, during the months of February and March, the Finca Manases farm hires about 80 temporary workers to collect its annual harvest.
The farm is located in the steep valleys of Los Santos, one of Costa Rica’s most-famous coffee growing regions. But almost none of the people picking coffee there are Costa Ricans. Instead, they come from Panama and Nicaragua.
“Costa Rica has invested a lot of money in health and education in the past few decades,” said Fernando Naranjo, the farm’s owner. “So, that gives young people here the option to work in other jobs,” which can pay more, and are less physically demanding.
Costa Rica has long depended on migrant workers to harvest its coffee, which is famous around the world for its large variety of flavors and high environmental standards. But this year’s harvest has been affected by labor shortages as a new set of immigration laws in Nicaragua makes it harder for farmworkers from that country to travel to Costa Rica.
Farmers in Costa Rica have been coming up with solutions for the labor shortages, which include a publicity campaign targeting Costa Rican workers and efforts to recruit more coffee pickers in Panama.
“The Nicaraguans did not come in large numbers this year,” Naranjo said at his farm, which spreads across several steep hills. “So, we had to recruit more workers in Panama, and hire buses to pick them up.”
In November, the Nicaraguan government passed an immigration law that allows border officials to deny Nicaraguans entry into their own country; it also imposes steep fines on Nicaraguans who left the country without passports or special travel permits.
The new law seeks to stop political dissidents from returning to the country, which is run by an authoritarian regime.
But it has also discouraged many farmworkers from leaving Nicaragua this year, said Yader Valdivia, a lawyer with the human rights group, Nicaragua Nunca Mas.
“If you leave Nicaragua, you now run a real risk of not being let back in,” Valdivia said. “People have been denied entry, or fined, without a clear explanation.”
At the peak of its harvest in December, Costa Rica requires 70,000 farmworkers to collect its coffee berries, according to ICAFE, the nation’s main coffee growers association. About 40% of these workers usually come from Nicaragua.
Analysts say that the new laws in Nicaragua are having a visible impact on this year’s harvest.
Carlos Fonseca, a consultant who works with more than 20 Costa Rican farms, said many of his clients lost about 10% of their crop this year.
“We had farms that needed 100 people, but were only able to recruit 40 workers,” Fonseca said. “The coffee cherries were drying up and shriveling on the plants,” because there was no one to collect them.
In response to the labor shortages, ICAFE launched a campaign to recruit local workers.
It published ads in newspapers and posted social media videos encouraging people to work in the coffee fields.
Gabriela Traña, a former Olympic marathon runner who is now in her 40s and is somewhat of a local celebrity, joined the campaign.
“When I was in school, I used to pick coffee during the holidays,” she says in a promotional video where she is filmed smiling and wearing a big hat as she picks coffee at a farm. “I loved it. Because it taught us how important it is to work hard and have goals in life.”
Farmers say they have gotten some calls from local workers thanks to the campaign. But they also say that Costa Rican workers don’t stay for long. And sometimes, they ask for conditions that farmers cannot afford.
“I had people who called and asked if we had a house for them to stay in, and a garage for their car,” said farm owner Fernando Naranjo. “I don’t even have a garage for my own car.”
Naranjo’s farm employed about 65 Panamanian workers this year and 15 Nicaraguans who made it to the Los Santos region despite the new travel restrictions.
While they are working at the farm, they stay in basic dorms that have Wi-Fi access and shared bathrooms.
“I like coming to Costa Rica,” said Mayra Urbina, a worker from Nicaragua who used gloves to protect her hands as she scraped red berries from the coffee bushes. “Here, we can make twice as much money as in Nicaragua.”
Fonseca, the coffee consultant, said Costa Rican workers won’t fill the void that has been left by fewer arrivals of Nicaraguan workers. So, in the long run, Costa Rican farms will have to depend less on manual labor.
One possible solution is to use handheld machines that shake the coffee berries off the plants.
Farms could also leave more space in-between coffee bushes, to let small tractors pass by to collect berries. But that might not be possible, given the steep terrain of most Costa Rican coffee farms. Those who want to mechanize might also have to make their land less steep by terracing the hills.
“We are still in a trial-and-error phase when it comes to using machines,” Fonseca said.
Pablo Bonilla, a farmer who roasts his own coffee and owns a 200-hectare (nearly 500 acres) farm, said that finding laborers is one of the main challenges faced by Costa Rica’s coffee industry.
He said that farms in the Los Santos area are trying to offer coffee pickers higher wages and even day care centers for their children to convince them to keep coming back.
But Bonilla added that in order to sustain the incentives for coffee pickers, farms in the area will also have to get good prices for their beans.
“As long as prices are good, we will continue to make coffee,” Bonilla said. “I don’t want to go and work in an office. I want to live in the countryside and visit my plantations every day.”