Agronomist Luis Diego Aguilar Mora works for the Nespresso AAA Program to improve farming practices in Costa Rica
An agronomist in Costa Rica
Luis Diego Aguilar Mora does not work far from where he was born and raised on a farm in the province of Cartago in central Costa Rica. Here, coffee cultivation has been one of the leading industries since the 19th century, with some of the world’s finest Arabica coffee beans growing along the lush hillsides of Orosí Valley.
With his love and understanding of agriculture, Luis joined the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program as an agronomist in 2013. Since then, he has supported a group of some 75 AAA coffee farmers in Orosí Valley with training sessions and technical assistance. He has helped farmers understand and implement agricultural best practices, such as integrated pest management, proper pruning methods and fertilization.
Working to ensure highest quality coffee
He also is responsible for quality control at a number of receiving stations. This is where farmers bring their picked, ripe coffee cherries for registration and preliminary assessment. Soon after, the coffee is taken to a central mill, where it is processed to exacting standards into the dried, green coffee that is delivered to Nespresso.
A focus of Luis’s work is helping farmers with the renewal of their coffee trees, and the introduction of leaf rust-resistant coffee varieties, to ensure not only the quality but also quantity of coffee production in the valley.
He also leads a unique initiative in the country. Luis is mapping the entire Nespresso cluster of Orosí. This includes soil data analysis, noting erosion problems and tracking the development of leaf rust on coffee farms. The information is collected in the comprehensive AAA Farm Advanced Relationship Management System (F.A.R.M.S), which Nespresso developed in order to understand, track and advance improvements in the productivity, quality, and sustainability of coffee farms in the AAA Program.
Luis is proud that the coffee farmers he has been working with have increased their yield by 60% in a one year. By learning to manage their farms more efficiently, they have also reduced their costs, and can thus enjoy more of their earnings from each harvest.
Building lasting relationships with coffee farmers
Their successes are a sign of encouragement to future coffee farming generations, in a region whose coffee crops were strongly affected by disease and climate change. Faced with such challenges, many coffee growers went out of business, as it was no longer profitable for them to grow coffee.
By forging lasting friendships through the AAA Program, Luis has been able to reach many coffee farmers. Not only have they remained in the business, they have also increased their productivity and sustainability indicators at a level that a few years back was thought to be impossible.
For Luis, the Nespresso AAA Sustainable Quality™ Program is a way of reviving and nurturing the rich tradition of coffee farming in the region as a way of life. “It is an opportunity for farmers to work together with agronomists to improve their coffee farms, increase their knowledge and change their ways of working, in order to keep this culture as rich and beautiful as the coffee.”
