Isn’t it ironic that Costa Rica, our country famed throughout the world for its amazing flora and fauna, is also at or near the top worldwide for pesticide and herbicide use per unit of farmland? Ironic, and disgusting. And infuriating. Infuriating because this land is blessedly fertile. One can quite literally throw a few seeds into the ground and with a bit of care, watch plants come to life naturally. Home gardens flourish throughout the nation, and while all are not 100 percent organic, chemical use is typically minimal.
Of course, it is not the backyard planting responsible for the unwanted ranking. The main culprit is big agro. Multinational companies convert huge swaths of land into monoculture farms. Banana and pineapple plantations apply massive amounts of chemicals with names like mancozeb, glyphosate and ethoprophos in order to kill fungi, weeds, and anything else that might endanger the profitable yield of the valuable export crops.
I once spent a year in a small town in the southern zone of Costa Rica that was located in the heart of Del Monte’s pineapple plantations. The village was surrounded by a vast desert of pineapples. Almost everyone in the area worked for the company. Pay was minimal, but there were other benefits such as a free clinic for the laborers, a necessity due to the harsh labor-intensive work, that required long hours in the hot sun, and regular exposure to the variety of unhealthy chemicals used to ensure a steady supply of pineapples to sell worldwide.
There is an interesting parallel between this type of agriculture and the mega-resorts beginning to spring up in Costa Rica. Both are sources of steady employment for locals. Both are owned and operated primarily by outsiders. Both pay lip service to the environment. Mega resort developers will chop down trees, fill in mangroves, handle sewage and waste haphazardly, and either pay whatever fines come their way, or pay the right officials to look the other way.
Everywhere I have lived in Costa Rica, we have done our own small personal gardening. I live on a 700 square meter lot in a barrio of San Isidro de el General, about one mile uphill from downtown. On our lot we have all of the following: An avocado tree that has yielded hundreds of delicious fruits the past few years; a banana tree planted less than a year ago that recently provided our first regime; a vine that produces enormous chayotes; a lemon tree; a row of pineapples that was recently harvested, and mint and oregano plants.
And all of these have produced without the use of any type of lab-derived chemicals. This is why I take it personally. Ideally, we would all be taking advantage of the wondrous conditions available in Costa Rica for growing just about anything and caring for land while also reaping its benefits. Alas, we live in a world far from ideal, where production and profit are king.
Photos of what grows naturally in our backyard in a barrio in PZ, lemons, avocados, chayote, bananas, pineapple, oregano. Mint
