Trashy Agriculture

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/01/MNF316N0CV.DTL

Synopsis

Above is a link to a San Francisco Chronicle article written by Jane Kay highlighting the efforts taking place in California cities, notably San Francisco, where local restaurants, hotels, and other local businesses are taking innovative steps to begin retracting the amount of waste going into landfills while simultaneously creating jobs, enhancing agriculture, and both directly and indirectly stimulating the economy. The process begins with local businesses. In the San Francisco case, food and beverage outlets that produce organic waste begin by separating any organic material capable of being turned into compost into specially marked bins from where a separate organization collects them and then sells the waste to local farmers. Before the waste is resold, it is converted into significantly enhanced, organic compost that farmers use on their crops.

Application

I believe that an example such as this is an important application of Ecotourism that could be applied to the case of Costa Rica. California has helped create jobs, reduce waste, make farms more productive, stimulate the overall economy in these cities, as well as create incredible press for those individuals participating in this program. All of these would be items one would expect to find if the same kind or similar type of program were to be developed in many of Costa Rica’s most popular tourist destinations.

If Costa Rica were to adapt a similar kid of process as those individuals in San Francisco, there would be a substantial injection of potential/actual jobs for those individuals impacted by the tourism occurring there (i.e. somebody to separate the waste on property, individuals to collect the waste, individuals to cultivate it, etc). By encouraging local individuals to participate in these activities, it would develop a successful collaboration between the local community and the major tourism operations throughout Costa Rica. A program like this would also allow the tourism to help stimulate agriculture development throughout Costa Rica, and it is possible that some kind of cooperative could be developed to allow these tourism operations to directly benefit from this process. If a process like this became popular enough to collect a significant amount of waste, the compost could be specifically used to facilitate the demand of local and less invasive kinds of agriculture for local farmers to supply the tourism industry with (i.e. fresh vegetables, coffee, fruit, etc), especially due to the significant amount of productive, volcanic soil Costa Rica boasts.