Costa Rican Coffee is a Preferred Drink in the US
Recent polls suggest that Costa Rican coffee is one of three in regards to preference by consumers in the United States after Colombian and Brazilian coffee.
The top five recognized coffees according to people from the United States come from Colombia, Brazil, Costa Rica, Kenya and Vietnam in that respective order. This puts Costa Rica in the top three of the National Coffee Associations ranking list for three years running which spells good news for Costa Rican coffee producers.
The United States represents the largest importers of Costa Rican coffee followed by Belgium and Germany. Japan is also one of the markets that customarily imports a lot of coffee from Costa Rica, but all others pale in comparison to the United States which represents more than fifty percent of the annual numbers of coffee exported.
Coffee had been on the decline for the past few years, because of the roya fungus and other factors that were eating into coffee prices and profit. That in turn resulted in less output from coffee producers and a lower volume of coffee being produced. This makes the recent news a somewhat bittersweet announcement due to the lower numbers of coffee in stock.
The spark to people in the United States recognizing Costa Rica as being a source of gourmet coffee may have come from Starbucks. The famous Seattle based coffee vending company began marketing La Mesa in Dota, Tarrazu’s cup of excellence as the most expensive coffee sold by the chain. This and other factors probably contributed to the NCAs results.
Coffee, beef, sugar and melons have seen an upswing from 2014 to 2015, whereas the historically powerful products of bananas and pineapples haven’t been performing well in a number of years. Medical devices from Costa Rica have also been doing well in the global marketplace, but bananas and pineapples have suffered from low temperatures and too much rain among other problems in 2015.
The National Coffee Institute of Costa Rica believes that the numbers of exports will continue to increase through 2015 into 2016, but Procomer (The Export Promotion Agency of Costa Rica) doesn’t expect bananas and pineapples to return to high production levels until after 2016.
Related Read:
