The main exports include: bananas, pineapples, coffee, sugar, rice, vegetables, tropical fruits, ornamental plants, corn, potatoes and palm oil.
The rolling mountains and dense jungles were full of biologic diversity but eventually the original belief that Costa Rica was a gold rich country was proved to be wrong.
The more goods produced at such rapid rates, the less expensive the companies have to sell their products for, making them leaders in the world market.
These plantations (e.g. Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita) primarily grow bananas, pineapples, sugar, coffee, and ornamental plants.
Many crops cultivated through plantation farming are usually genetically modified to improve and hasten growth and increase resistance to pests and diseases.
Large sectors of forest are demolished to make way for huge high-yield corporate agricultural fields, which has a major influence on surrounding ecosystems.
As a result of the heavy use of pesticides used in plantation farming and many domestic flora and fauna are dying off, while some pests, such as the very venomous Fer de lance snake are rapidly multiplying.
This greatly increases the carbon footprint and energy intensity of the food consumption, and at tremendous social and other environmental costs.
[8] Plantation agriculture was a significant contributor to the runoff and other environmental effects caused by the pesticides because over a third of these agrochemicals are used on banana and plantain production.
[10] The advent of genetically modified organisms has become an enormous industry because of the fragile nature of monoculture agribusiness of the United States and conventional plantations the Europeans introduced to Costa Rica.
When hundreds of acres are deforested and covered with only one type of one plant, the farmer has elevated the potential for blights, insect infestations, and other disturbances to be disastrous.
As land is cleared for agro fields, their prey has fewer places to hide, causing a substantial ease in their hunt.
A newer technology method that sustainable farmers in Costa Rica are beginning to employ is the use of plug-flow anaerobic digesters.
These machines are "long, narrow, insulated, and heated tanks made of reinforced concrete, steel or fiberglass with a gas tight cover to capture the biogas.
These tribes rely on natural growth within the forest as well as small sustainable gardens to produce enough food for a clan to survive on.
The Bribri tribe of Talamanca reside in the Puerto Limon region and cultivate more than 120 wild and domestic crop species, providing provisions, building materials, medicine, and trade items for the people.
[14] Some other practices these subsistence farmers adhere to include: maintaining their natural resource base, manage pests and diseases through internal regulating mechanisms rather than pesticides and other chemicals, and relying on minimum artificial inputs from outside the farm system.
[14] Many of these Costa Rican communities are beginning to the effects of globalization as many plantations are buying up land and invading indigenous areas.
"On September 12, the Administrative Tribunal of Contention ordered the relevant federal agencies – the Institute of Agrarian Development (IDA) and the National Commission of Indigenous Affairs (CONAI) – to expropriate more than 11,000 acres of land to be returned to the Bribri community of the Kekoldi reservation—this part of Bribri territory is currently occupied by non-indigenous people.
DAIR-PYMES provides scientific and technological support to rural agroindustrial MSMEs (Micro, Small, and Medium sized Enterprises).