Finnish Mikko fell in love with Colombia – a unique coffee farm was born

Finn Mikko Kauppinen is a familiar sight in the village of Confines, in the Santander region of Colombia. There, he and his family run a coffee farm called Finca Las Ventanas, whose products have already found their way onto store shelves. On a national scale, however, the Finnish person is a rare sight, which is reflected in people’s reactions.

– People come to the malls to touch and say Gringo. It’s kind of a nickname, but they don’t mean it badly. For them, it’s really exotic, Kauppinen laughs.

He made his first contact with Colombia with his Colombian-born wife Andrean through.

– We used to meet in the United States and then hit the nails together. We set out from all over the world.

The couple has lived in South America and Africa, among other places. In 2009 they moved to Finland and a couple of years later the firstborn of the family was born Isabella. In 2014, another daughter was born into the family Miia.

According to Kauppinen, the family currently lives in two countries, Finland and Colombia. The couple also wanted their children to take root in Colombia and become acquainted with Colombian culture, which is made possible by the current arrangement.

Korona forced to change plans

The idea of ​​setting up a coffee farm was inspired by many different things. Kauppinen wanted to set up a café at his workplace as a meeting place for work communities and serve coffee so good that people would have no reason to go anywhere else.

– That’s where the idea gradually developed, Kauppinen says.

Kauppinen had also spent long periods of time with his wife’s relatives in Colombia and became acquainted with coffee growing on that side. During the meetings, the story often turned to a topic that unites Finns and Colombians: coffee.

Eventually, the result of these discussions was Finca Las Ventanas, a Finnish coffee farm in Colombia, in the heart of coffee. The farm’s first coffee harvest was harvested in the autumn of 2019, and the first cups of the farm’s coffee were enjoyed in the workplace café conceived by Kauppinen in 2020.

The coffee was to be sold to other cafes as well, but Korona put the plans again. According to Kauppinen, the priority of the cafés became survival, and there was no room for new products or ideas.

– We got the first crop to Finland a week before all the places were closed. No one was interested in hearing anything new.

Kauppinen says he regretted the situation for one weekend, but then realized that there is a demand for coffee, whatever the situation.

The focus was on distributing the product through stores so people could get the coffee directly into their homes. Kauppinen’s coffee is now sold in large supermarket chains, especially in the Helsinki metropolitan area.

Part of a large Colombian family

Finca Las Ventanas is a family farm. Uncle Andrea helps run the space Oliviero and his daughter Bibianaand Andrea ‘s cousin Juan Miguel, which acts as the ranger of the farm. In Colombia, an extensive network is helpful, as the work culture is more communal than in Finland.

– We do everything together as a team, Kauppinen says.

In any case, the Colombian work culture is very different from the Finnish one. It may be difficult for concise and sparse Finns to get used to the influx of Colombians. According to Kauppinen, even in the smallest issue in Colombia, there is a lot more discussion and interlocutors.

– In Finland, one or two sentences are enough and the matter has been handled.

According to Kauppinen, everyone in Colombia has an opinion. Finding a common tone can take a long time, and conflicts are not avoided.

– Nobody ever says that I don’t really know, or I don’t take a stand, Kauppinen laughs.

The importance of the family in Colombia is great. In the Finnish mental landscape, the core family usually includes parents and their children, but in Colombia it is a much broader concept.

Kauppinen himself has become part of an extensive Colombian family through his wife Andrea. He thinks there are pros and cons to the Colombian concept of family.

– Finnish people sometimes need their own peace, but people are always knocking and coming to visit. However, that is part of it and it must be accepted that this is how it works here.

Trust between family members is hard. According to Kauppinen, trust in Finland is based on the fact that other Finns can be trusted in principle. Colombia does not think the same way.

– It can’t be said that they are Colombians, so I trust them. Trust is based on a relationship, most often a family relationship.

Colombia’s poor reputation is annoying

According to Kauppinen, Colombia has an annoyingly bad reputation, especially among Finns. Television series on drug paraphernalia and illegal business have stuck in people’s minds, even though they recount things that happened decades ago. According to Kauppinen, the current Colombia is on the rise and there are countless opportunities for entrepreneurship in the country.

– A positive reputation disappears quickly, but removing a negative reputation is really laborious and difficult.

The Finca Las Ventanas farm currently comprises 7 hectares and 30,000 coffee bushes. There are plans to make cocoa in addition to coffee in the future. Much of the production is environmentally friendly.

Kauppinen has made a lot of reforms to make the farm’s production as sustainable as possible. Traditionally, a lot of water is needed to wash coffee, but the renovations have reduced the farm’s water consumption by a whopping 90 percent. In addition, the space is powered by electricity generated by its own solar power plant.

Kauppinen’s farm does not use arable farming, but the coffee bushes grow in their natural environment in the middle of the rainforest. The rainforest ecosystem provides coffee bushes with the necessary nutrients and water, and the crops do not need irrigation. In global coffee production, such cultivation is rare.

– Coffee has started to be grown in places where it should not be grown, in ways that are not natural for coffee, Kauppinen regrets.

One of the main values ​​of space is transparency. According to Kauppinen, Finns are more interested in finding out about the origin of the product than in the rest of the world, and therefore the aim is to make the farm’s production process as transparent as possible.

– Finns are really interested in where the product comes from. The rest of the world is not very interested in it, Kauppinen says.