Costa Rican Agriculture and Essential Economic Diversity

Synopsis

Above is a photograph of a Costa Rican individual picking coffee beans in one of Costa Rica’s famous coffee fields. This is a relevant photograph when discussing Costa Rica’s economy and its dependency on tourism and agriculture. Much of Costa Rica’s economy is derived from foreign and domestic tourism dollars, but another substantial portion of Costa Rica’s economy is derived from luxury crops and this creates an interesting dilemma for the Costa Rican case study. Much of the crops that are grown in Costa Rica (bananas, coffee, pineapple, etc.) are considered to be crops that are incredibly sensitive to economic fluctuations and are therefore crops that have the potential to leave Costa Rica vulnerable to economic downturns like the one the entire world is currently experiencing. It is also important to note that tourism is severely impacted by economic downturns as well.

Application

This creates an incredible dilemma for those living and interacting within the Costa Rican economy. Because a substantially large portion of Costa Rica’s agriculture consists of luxury crops that are most often replaced or excluded from consumer’s grocery lists around the world in an economic downturn, there are going to be severe negative impacts on the Costa Rican economy. Although Costa Rica has tried to diversify its major industries (i.e. computer processing chips and Intel), there are still a significant portion of Costa Rica’s industry segments that are too susceptible to economic fluctuations. In terms of ecotourism, all this means is that because Costa Rica’s economy may not be as stable as it could be if more recession proof industries were developed, foreign investors will still be able to monopolize the billions of tourism dollars entering the country annually. When a country’s own economic cycles are not able to facilitate enough capital for enough of its citizens to produce viable tourism entities of their own(hotels, tour operations, food and beverage outlets, etc), foreign investors will continue to take domestic Costa Rican profits overseas to their own countries, regardless of whether or not they have a vested interest in Costa Rica itself. Costa Rica will either diversify its industry segments or face a potential future of tourism dollars being siphoned to foreign investors and their countries.