[New] Nature’s Abundance

Baskets of Bounty for Domestic and Export Markets

by Jim Parisi and Alei Burns

Agriculture has always been vitally important to Costa Rica’s self-sustainability, while also playing an integral part in the Gross National Product for more than two centuries. The country’s diverse climates ensure a wide variety of fruits and vegetables can thrive, while dictating where these cash crops are best grown.

Coffee, specifically, is harvested from plants grown in the cooler mountain regions. It has been Costa Rica’s leading export product since the end of the

The introduction of international big business into the economic equation has resulted in monoagriculture plantations producing solely one of the next three biggest food export crops: bananas, pineapples or sugar.

Overall, Costa Rica’s fruit and vegetable production accounts for about 10% of the nation’s economy, comprising about one-fifth of its labor force. Agriculture, in turn, uses about 10% of the country’s land. It is a compact investment with very high

Click here to continue reading

By Captain Paul Watson Founder – Sea Shepherd 1977

In 1971, I set out on a stormy November cruise from Vancouver, northward to a remote barren island called Amchitka in the Alaskan Aleutian archipelago.