Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0097/00972.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 34KB | 527 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00972}
$Pretitle{290}
$Title{Costa Rica
Chapter 3B.   Crops and Agriculture}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Donald P. Whitaker}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{costa
percent
production
early
tons
hectares
rica
coffee
province
puntarenas}
$Date{1983}
$Log{Harvesting Sugarcane*0097204.scf
Zebu Cattle*0097205.scf
}
Country:     Costa Rica
Book:        Costa Rica, A Country Study
Author:      Donald P. Whitaker
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1983

Chapter 3B.   Crops and Agriculture

Crops

     Costa Rica's wide range of climates-tropical, subtropical, and
temperate-permits cultivation of a variety of crops. Those produced mainly for
export predominate over those grown primarily for domestic consumption. The
principal so-called traditional export crops include bananas, coffee, cacao,
and sugarcane (sugar). In the early 1980s the government was also promoting
increased production for export of various "nontraditional" crops, including
coconuts, macadamia nuts, melons, pineapples, and a number of other tropical
items grown in Costa Rica. The major crops cultivated for domestic consumption
were beans, maize, plantains, potatoes, rice, sorghum, and onions. Others of
less significance were cassava, cotton, and tobacco (see table 4, Appendix).

     The banana, believed to be native to tropical Asia, was introduced into
the Caribbean islands and then into Central America early in the Spanish
period. It was not until after the mid-1860s, however, that the fruit became
fairly widely known in the United States. By the 1870s a small but highly
profitable American market had developed for bananas (mostly from Jamaica and
some of the other islands). During that decade commercial production of the
Gros Michel variety, which became the leading market fruit, was started in
Costa Rica by American entrepreneur Minor Cooper Keith (see Minor Cooper
Keith, ch. 1). Keith's first exports, made in 1880 to New Orleans, totaled
360 stems of bananas. (A century later Costa Rica was exporting over 50
million 40-pound boxes of the fruit.) Large profits resulted from this first
shipment, and the plantation area was greatly expanded. Exports continued to
increase, but in the late 1890s Keith's general financial difficulties and
bankruptcy of the New Orleans importing firm that handled his production
led to a merger of the Keith holdings and those of the Boston Fruit Company,
which was then supplying bananas to the northeastern United States. The new
enterprise, the United Fruit Company, subsequently maintained a virtual
monopoly of Costa Rica's banana exports until the late 1950s; records for 1955
show that the company handled 99 percent of the total export that year.

     In 1956 the Standard Fruit Company, a subsidiary of the American Castle
and Cooke group, began production in the Caribbean coastal region; its first
exports were in 1959. In the 1960s a third major transnational company, the
Banana Development Corporation of Costa Rica (BANDECO), a subsidiary of the
Del Monte Corporation, also commenced operations. At the end of that decade,
the three multinationals accounted for 95 percent of banana exports (United
Fruit, 45 percent; Standard Fruit, 40 percent; and Del Monte, 10 percent). In
1979 the share of United Brands (the successor company to United Fruit after
a merger in 1970 with the American conglomerate AMK Corporation) stood at 36
percent, accounted for by two subsidiaries: the Banana Company of Costa Rica
(29 percent) and the Atlantic Banana Company (Compania Bananera
Atlantica-COBAL) (7 percent). Standard Fruit exported another 35 percent and
Del Monte 28 percent.

     United Fruit's original Costa Rican holdings were in the Caribbean
coastal region, where soils, temperatures, the well-distributed rainfall, and
the general absence of strong winds (which can easily knock down the
herbaceous banana plant when it is weighted with ripe fruit) provided
excellent growing conditions. In the early 1900s its plantations became
infected with the fungal Panama disease, which destroys the banana's
underground stem, and production declined steadily as plantations had to be
abandoned. In the 1930s the company acquired large areas of land on the west
coast in southern Puntarenas Province under an agreement with the government.
Plantations were established around Puerto Quepos and the present-day port
of Golfito, which the company constructed to handle the new trade. An
extensive railroad system was also built inland from Golfito port to service
the plantations (see Transportation, this ch.). Because of the region's
distinct dry season (January to March), irrigation was installed. The
plantations proved highly successful, but in the late 1940s Panama disease
struck the Puerto Quepos area. The disease spread rapidly, and by 1956
production there had been ended.

     In the mid-1960s United Fruit began planting in its Pacific coast
holdings a new banana variety, the Valery, which was resistant to the
disease. The success of the undertaking led to a return by the company to
the Caribbean coast. Standard Fruit, which operated in the Caribbean zone,
introduced a related variety, the Giant Cavendish. The success of the two
varieties also brought the reemergence of independent growers. The total area
in bananas rose from about 20,000 hectares at the beginning of the 1970s to
over 27,400 hectares in 1976; the total in 1980 stood at almost 26,100
hectares (some 19,000 hectares in the Caribbean area and over 6,500 hectares
in the Pacific zone). Of the 1980 total, almost 18,800 hectares belonged to
the three multinationals, and about 7,300 hectares were cultivated by
independent operators. However, the latter, located almost entirely in the
Caribbean region, were under contract to the large companies, which handled
the exporting of their fruit. The government since 1979 has provided
assistance to small producers to increase output per unit of land and to
enlarge holdings. The principal goal has been to increase export earnings,
and a main requirement for such assistance has been a confirmed contract
to deliver the fruit produced to an established exporter, in essence the
three transnationals.

     In the early 1980s, however, overall production and exports declined.
The principal reasons for the drop included the detrimental effects of an
infection by the black sigatoka disease (a leaf disease) of which a less
virulent form, yellow sigatoka disease, has been kept under control by
spraying, which appeared in late 1979 in the Caribbean zone. A fungus spread
by wind-borne spores, the disease had also reached the plantations on the
Pacific coast by 1980. As the economic recession worsened after 1981, control
of the disease was seriously hampered because of a shortage of government
funds to support efforts by the independent growers. In 1982 production was
reduced further as the result of a 63-day strike by workers on Standard Fruit
plantations. Exports were also affected that year by lower world prices caused
by a large increase in the output of bananas in Ecuador, the world's leading
exporter (Costa Rica is second). Domestic production costs were also cited by
the multinationals as a reason for smaller shipments, in particular the export
tax of US$1 per box, which was substantially higher than that of other Central
American countries. The main South American exporters, moreover, paid no tax
in 1983. Negotiations had begun in mid- and late 1983 between the government
and the three multinationals to develop a sliding scale for the tax to relate
it to the world market price, but a resolution had not been achieved by the
end of November.

     A significant factor in the decline in exported bananas (from 53 million
boxes in 1980 to 45 million in 1982) was the continued conversion of
land-particularly by United Brands-from bananas to the African oil palm, a
main source of edible oil. According to reports, the purpose of the shift
was to reduce operating costs; considerably fewer workers were required
to