Today we visited Coopedota. Coopedota is a cooperative made up of several different coffee farms in the same region. The farms all grown arabica coffee and contribute coffee beans to coopedota, where they are sorted by color, size, and quality, and and then roasted and packaged accordingly. The farms average about two hectares in size, with some smaller and some much larger. All are paid equally based on what the contribute (EX- a 2 hectare farm and a 30 hectare farm both make $3 per box of coffee beans).
By pooling resources and expertise, Coopedota has certain advantages over traditional companies. For example, the workers in this cooperative are all valued and compensated equally. This contributes immensely to the business's efficiency and profitability.
However, Coopedota's cooperative business model has certain disadvantages as well. For example, they are costly to run and maintain because of the equality of workers and contributors. Larger contributors may feel that this is unfair and try to leave in order to achieve a higher profit. Some will be successful, since there isn't anything (incentive or regulation) to keep them from leaving.
Without Coopedota, the community of Dota wouldn't be as well connected. Also, the multiple smaller coffee farms would likely be worse off, since they don't have the resources to sort and roast their coffee as they currently do. Since tourism isn't a large part of Dota's income, coffee is very important to the community as a whole.
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