Coffee Farm Field Trip And Much More!

Last weekend we hosted our 9th group coffee farm tour here in the heart of coffee country, in Boquete, Panama.

Over the last few years Panamanian coffee has been making headlines around the globe due to the record-breaking new sales prices achieved for its high-end Specialty Coffee.

For years, those inside the specialty coffee industry already knew all about Boquete and the excellent specialty coffee grown and produced here.

Now, over the last 4 years of running our group tours, real estate investors from around the world are also paying attention to this quiet little mountain town that we at International Coffee Farms (ICFC) call home.

We always enjoy hosting these group field trips. So much more fun than travelling to boring old trade shows!

Here we get to host clients, affiliates and curious entrepreneurs in our home town as they take time from their busy schedules to come spend a weekend with us, in the Tropics.

This latest group of like-minded individuals came together as strangers and left as friends, and even forged some business alliances to take back with them.

It was our pleasure to host them and to facilitate this type of networking.

As Russell Gray from the Real Estate Guys often says “Your network is your net-worth” so we certainly increased our social capital over the last few days.

Everyone who attended our coffee farm tour had common goals. They were looking to diversify outside of traditional real estate, outside of their own back yard, away from paper assets like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, and into tangible hard assets that produce in-demand proven products and can provide passive cash flow for years to come.

They see the bubble that is paper assets and they understand the role that agricultural real estate can play in protecting what they have and helping to create generational wealth.

They came to learn about owning half acre parcels in high altitude coffee farms, and they left with a wealth of knowledge about the specialty coffee industry. Maybe more than they bargained for!

For a full breakdown of what the group coffee farm tour entails, check out the Farm Tour page on our website. Go To Website

And if you want to “kick the trees” and see if owning parcels in one of our specialty coffee farms is also a good fit for you and your portfolio, reserve your seat on our final coffee farm tour of the year. Scheduled for November 9th to 11th 2018.

During the tour we let Andres Lopez, our General Manager, and Valentina Pedrotti, our in-house Biologist and Value Chain Analyst, do most of the talking. After all, you can talk to me anytime, but you don’t often get 3 days of first-hand knowledge from Andres and Valentina.

Our attendees told me that some of their highlights were when..

• They learned how altitude and micro-climates impact the quality and profile of specialty coffee.
• How specific varietals are chosen for certain locations throughout our network of farms, based on their phenotype and characteristics.
• The way Andres and his team have changed generations of planting systems to prevent erosion on our farms and promote life in our soil.
• When Valentina brought us to her “worm hotel” to demonstrate the benefits of vermicomposting.
• How it tied in perfectly with our fully closed-loop coffee processing system where nothing on the farm is wasted.

• We took a tour of our 1,800 square meter state-of-the-art, wet & dry coffee processing mill, or beneficio in Spanish.
• Everyone got to meet the native Indian nGobe Bugle workers and their families who live on our farms. And to see the improvements made to their living accommodations.
• Learning how our socially sustainable program has 58 children and 3 adults in school for the first time in their lives.
• Receiving a class in our coffee testing laboratory where our attendees learned how detailed a process it is to cup and grade specialty coffee. They even tried a hand at it themselves.
• Then we ended the tour the perfect way, with a trip to our new specialty coffee and artisanal chocolate shop The Perfect Pair. Where they got to sit back, digest all that information and enjoy amazing specialty coffee from our farms. Along with some delicious Belizean chocolates!

The chocolate was a sneak preview to our cacao/chocolate business in Belize.

Some of our tour attendees are already coffee farm parcel Owners and will now be further diversifying their portfolios with the addition of cacao farm parcels in Belize.

If you are interested in learning more, our next group tour of the year is in Belize where the Belize Cacao Consortium (BCC) is hosting its 5th group tour.

Scheduled for September 21st to 24th.

Visit our Farm Tour page to read all about this unique agricultural real estate discovery trip and reserve some of the remaining seats.

Thank you to everyone who has attended a tour in Panama or Belize over the last 4 years. And we look forward to meeting the next group of intrepid travellers.

I will leave you with one last group photo and the new friends we all made.

Even some 4 legged ones!