The Agriculture in Costa Rica

Costa Rica has always had agricultural productions, mainly coffee, pineapple and bananas. As the years pass by, the country is planting more and more products, the organic ones are on the rise and this is a great example of sustainable development in the country.

The government protects the little farmers with good bank arrangements and other benefits. Now, regarding the agribusiness management, there is a lot to cover because it is something relatively new.

The logistics include planification, resources organization, permits, execution and evaluation of the farming activities. Producers have to be conscious that even if agriculture is their business, Costa Rica´s soil needs to be taken care of. There are guidelines talking about how to do farming correctly and the products like fertilizers and pesticides that can be used in the crops or in the plantations. To accomplish that the farmers are the ones to manage their farms as a business is a challenge in the medium and long term. Prosperity will come but first, they need the necessary tools to make it happen in the small and big plantations.

The capacitation of knowledge and skills for farmers is very important so they can apply it and adapt it to their activity. It is also relevant if the farmers can provide feedback regarding the capacitations or laws because, at the end of the day, they know better than anybody else about farming and crops.

So these lessons provided by the government have to start from a basic level of business administration because, as obvious as it seems, farmers already know how to farm. If the academic teachers provide information on farming, producers won´t be interested and might feel belittled. However, if the training is directed to accounting, marketing, commercialisation, sales, sustainable development, how to run a cooperative, finances, budgets, planification and other technical knowledge about production, farmers are way more likely to be interested and be able to benefit from those educational spaces.

By 2022, there are 1200 enlisted people working in agribusiness, 16 projects financed by external resources and 82 cooperative techniques actions with an economic investment of $2.8 million.

The European Union is developing 2 projects in Costa Rica that are the AGRO-INNOVA (Agroforestry Systems Adapted for the Central American Dry Corridor) that increases the resilience of the climatic variability and the PROCAGICA that created the ICAFE molecular biology laboratory that enhances the sanitary practices for the agroindustry in the country, the study of the plagues´s resistance and diseases transmitted by animals and plants, mostly related to coffee.

It is very impressive how the agricultural sector in Costa Rica is so important for the country’s development in every aspect. Farmers need to be helped and protected in order to maintain this tendency and to provide the best quality products that can be made so the industry keeps growing and improving.