Change of plans... go figure

So due to a tropical storm and or depression passing over the entire country the other day, our plans for the weekend changed. Instead of heading to the Osa Peninsula on Friday morning, we had class instead. Then today (Saturday) we went white water rafting through the rainforest. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. I can´t even describe how picturesque the area was. We were litterally deep in the rainforest, totally natural, and even saw some native indians and indigenous people along the way. We had an incredible day for rafting, the weather was perfect, the sun was out (you would never guess that a tropical storm just passed through), even the usual Costa Rican afternoon shower held off long enough for us to finish our trip. The company picked us up from Veritas at 6:15 this morning, drove us to breakfast and then up a mountain to where we started the rafting trip back down. Along the way we stopped on a patch of rocks along the side of the river and the guides pulled out all kinds of fruits and vegitables and meats and we all ate a big lunch together. Afterwards we continued down to the end and came back to San Jose around 500. It was a long day but a very exciting and satisfying one.

Now that the storm has cleared we were able to push back our trip to the Osa Peninsula so we leave for that tomorrow at 6am sharp. I am really excited to see what it is like down there, but I am also a little nervous about the conditions we will be living in for the next 3 days. (The Osa Peninsula is off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica, along the Panama border, and it is regarded as the most biodiverse place on Earth. You aren´t even able to drive to it, we have to take a boat to actually get there and we are staying at some kind of park reserve that sounds like one giant tent with cots inside... should be interesting) Bring on the next adventure...

Bananas Tres

I opened the internet to check my email earlier and a news headline on the homepage caught my attention. It read "Disease Wiping Out Bananas, Could Be Extinct In Just Five Years." I clicked on the link and came to an article by Geoff Williams which then lead me to another article entitled "Why Bananas are a Parable of Our Time" by Johann Hari of the Seattle Post Intelligence. The gist of the article is this...

Around 150 years ago there were many types of bananas that grew in jungles around the world. The United Fruit Company singled out one type (the Gros Michel, or Big Mike as its referred to) and started mass producing it for sale across the world. This sounds like a good plan until realizing what a negative business model United Fruit Company used, finding weak, un-wealthy countries, burn down the rainforest to plant your crop, make the local workers depend on you, and then when something goes wrong with the crop dump chemicals on it or move on to the next country and start over. These Gros Miche bananas, which no longer exist, suffered a fate of a strange disease now known as Panama Disease. Panama Disease is a fungus that attacks the plant, kills the leaves, and makes bananas inedible. There is no cure or treatment for the disease. When this species died out, United Fruit found a replacement, the Cavendish banana that we now eat, which they thought at the time was immune to Panama Disease. However, we know know that it was not immune and, due to the homogeneity of the crop and farming practices used by the corporations, the bananas that we now know and love are being killed off again. The article states that in as little as 5 or as many as 30 years, Cavendish bananas will be extinct. Though there are other alternative species of bananas we could use as a replacement, none will have the same texture or taste as the ones we know and love now. This is especially disturbing to me, a banana lover.

Infected Banana Plants

Bananas, dos

Though we have not yet visited a banana production facility yet, the topic keeps coming up in class so I got curious and started Googling. The common thing that I kept finding and kept grabbing my attention was the poor treatment of banana farm workers. They are forced to work long hours in the hot sun and harsh conditions without proper benefits or compensation. They are exposed to very dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals on a daily basis. The towns near plantations where the workers live are poor living conditions with many social problems. How do companies (in any industry really) think that its ok to treat their employees this way? Though some companies in smaller developing countries may get away with it for now, this goes along with everything we have talked about in class concerning risk management. Eventually the poor treatment and labor conditions will come back to bite the companies carrying out these practices and the consequences could be harsh. Besides, if companies treated their employees well they would be happier to work hard and more dedicated to their quality of work, as we saw for example with Daisy Rodriguez's small coffee plantation.

I did find a few more hopeful instinces of fair treatment of banana workers and support of the local communities, though. Some companies are realizing that there needs to be a change and are taking the steps to get there. Many of these companies are also those that are beginning to be more sustainable in their production, often times organic farmers. The Sustainable Banana Program supports these companies and helps to spread movement among banana producers by encouraging banana production that protects the society, economy, and cultures of banana producing countries through education of consumers about the industry and its practices, research assistance to help small producers who do not have the proper funding to do it on their own, and marketing of organic banana producers to consumers especially in the US. This sounds like an organization that could really be a motivating factor and driver for organic production and more socially responsible banana production. It is trying to solve many of the problems for small banana producers that Daisy mentioned that resulted when she attempted to be a small organic coffee producer.

Weekend Trip 1 - Arenal and Monteverde

View of Arenal Volcano from the door of my hotel room

Last weekend was amazing. It was our first long weekend trip and it was great to get out of San Jose and travel around the country some. On Friday we traveled to Arenal Volcano, an active volcano that last violently erupted around 40 years ago. When the sky is clear and it is dark outside you can see the red lava coming out of the top of it still, and during the day you can hear boulders being thrown and rolling down the sides of the volcano. We got to stay right at the base of the volcano in a small hotel. The view was unreal and the volcano was so picturesquely perfect it looked like it should be fake or straight out of a textbook. Friday night was spent at the Baldi Hot Springs, natural hot springs from the volcanic activity. It was really fun to just be able to hang out totally casually and enjoy each others company.

Then on Saturday morning we got up and visited a hydroelectric power plant that supplies the area with its power. From there we got to ride horses up to a waterfall. I was a little nervous since I haven´t ridden a horse in probably a few years, but I made the mistake of putting myself in the group with ¨experience¨ on horses and they made me be the first to get on a horse. The ride was so fun though. We rode up to La Fortuna waterfall and then got a chance to swim around in the cold water. Later that afternoon we took a hike at the volcano and got to see some incredible views of the volcano and the area surrounding it.

Sunday morning we got up and crossed the Arenal Lake by boat and experienced an interesting (to say the least) van ride to Monteverde, a cloud forest. We got the opportunity to stay right in the national park reserve lodge, the rainforest right out our windows. Sunday afternoon was spent ziplining through the forest on a canapy tour in the pouring down rain. This might have been my favorite part of the weekend. It was so cool to see the forest from that point of view. That night we did a night hike of the rainforest with guides who showed us some of the wildlife that comes out at night. We didn´t get to see as much wildlife as we would have hoped though since it was still (go figure) pouring down rain.

View of the volcano from the lake

Monday morning we got up early and left the lodge on a morning hike of the forest to try and see some more animals. This time we were luckier and got to see some Quetsels, a bird that apparently people travel from all over the world to try and see but rarely actually do. We came back to San Jose that afternoon and some of us spent our free time at the marketplace in downtown San Jose trying to bairgain our way through souvenier shopping.

Our professors gave us free days on Tuesday and Wednesday so the whole group planned a trip to Manuel Antonio, a small beach town. Even though we had terrible rainy and overcast weather, we still had a blast on the trip. We even finally saw the monkeys we had all been dying to see and they were just right outside our hotel in the trees (and one unfortunate monkey roadkill).

If the rest of our weekend trips are half as entertaining and and adventurous as the last one then I can´t wait to experience the rest of them, too.

Ecotourism

The International Ecotouism Society, or TIES, offers the following definitions on their website that I found incredibly helpful in understanding the intent behind ecological tourism, better known as ecotourism...

• ECOTOURISM: Responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people.
• SUSTAINABLE TOURISM: Tourism that meets the needs of present tourists and host regions while protecting and enhancing opportunities for the future.

Before reading those definitions and some of the other information on the TIES website, I was not fully aware of what "ecotourism" was. As far as I knew it was just tourism in nature. Now I understand better that there is a purpose, and a good one at that, behind the practice and marketing of ecotourism in a responsible, sustainable way. Not only is ecotourism about reducing the environmental impact that tourism takes on a place, but also about raising awareness of cultures, places, and problems that our world is facing. My hope is that if people participate in ecotourism as we have on this trip they will be enlightened to the beauty of our world and perhaps think twice about their lifestyle and habits, even if it is minute changes they make, in order to preserve the environment.

When I get a chance, I am going to do further research on the ecotourism industry and see if I can find any statistics on the number of people who participate. After the small amount of research I've done already, and especially the ecotourism that I have participated in and fully enjoyed in the last 2 weeks, the topic is especially intriguing to me.

Coffee dos

So we visited 2 coffee plantations this week. One was a small family-operated (by Daisy Rodriguez) plantation in a remote area on the side of a mountain. Our bus, which could not make the trip all the way to the plantation due to the road condition, dropped us at a point on the road where we continued the rest by foot, on a rocky unpaved road lined with flowers and greenery, including some coffee plants. There Daisy produces her brand "Del Cafe... Tal" (which I am happy to say I purchased a bag of) which just won the best cup of coffee in Costa Rica award, a very prestigious honor. Since winning this award Daisy can now sell her coffee for much higher prices and she said how much more enthusiastic and committed her employees were to their work on the plantation because of the award. The operation there is small, but Daisy harvests, processes, packages, and markets and sells the coffee herself, without any intermediaries which would greatly take away from her profits. It was very interesting to hear her talking about the process she goes through to make the coffee. She told us how she used to make organic coffee for a couple of years, but because of the costs and lack of profitable business in the industry she was forced to stop and go back to producing inorganically (which then won her the best coffee award). It is unfortunate that there are not greater incentives, especially for small producers like Daisy to make their coffee farms organic. Though Daisy admitted to being slightly flustered and surprised by our large group and such short notice of our visit, she was very friendly and genuine and gladly welcomed us into her farm.

In a completely different experience, we visited Cafe Britt coffee yesterday. Cafe Britt is less of a farming operation and more of a buying and processing plant for coffee. They are one of the main brands of coffee in Costa Rica as you soon find out after seeing their brand almost everywhere we go. This visit could not have been any different than the visit to Daisy´s quaint farm. We were quickly ushered from the easily accessible parking lot, along a paved sidewalk through the coffee plants, and through a "tour" that seemed more like a show at an amusement park complete with actors and silly costumes (though they did give us a lot of information about the origin of coffee and techniques that are used in making it). We were then lead to the fully-stocked gift shop and into a restaurant on-site for lunch. Though it was interesting to see everything Cafe Britt does, the visit was definitely geared at tourists and did not feel as genuine or sincere as the visit with Daisy earlier that week.

The contrasts between the two visits are endless. Daisy uses smaller, simpler machinery and technigues while Cafe Britt has a large manufacturing facility. Daisy is directly involved in her coffee every step of the way and takes great pride in her product. Cafe Britt buys most of the coffee they produce from smaller farmers. The list goes on and on. It is no wonder that Daisy talked about times of struggling with her coffee production and sales when a large corporation like Cafe Britt controls so much of the market.

Some of Daisy's Equipment (left)

Bananas

The banana industry, though profitable, has caused deforestation distaster among the Central American countries that grow the crop. Though the market used to be mostly small family-run plantations, recently larger companies (such as Dole and Chiquita) have moved into Central America and begun taking over the industry. Since fruit companies began mass producing bananas they are grown as a mono-crop with no genetic diversity. This is an easy target disease and harmful pathogens which have historically caused great damage to the industry. When a crop is attacked by a disease and no longer productive the companies then opt to move the entire plantation to a new location, therefore resulting in the clearing of even more rainforest where the banana trees can use the rich in nutrient soil. Needless to say, this is a very inefficient way of producing the fruit and the disease-ridden plantations are left abandoned and not available for any other use. The use of pesticides and other chemicals by the large fruit companies are additional harm to both the fruit and people who will eventually eat them, as well as the workers at the plantation that are forced to be exposed to the hazardous chemicals on a daily basis.

It will be interesting to visit such a plantation in a few weeks and really get an idea of how destructive the banana production really is to the environment.

Coffee

Now that we are starting to blog about our assigned industries for class, I started doing some research on the coffee industry. I was suprised to read that one source claimed that coffee is the second most valuable (legally) traded commodity on Earth, only surpassed by oil. Of all the tens of billions of dollars that result from sales of coffee around the world, less than 10% of that money ends up back in the hands of the countries that grow the coffee. The rest of the money ends up with the companies that market and sell the coffee to the consumer. The main buyers of raw coffee beans are the four largest multinational buyers - Nestle, Kraft, Procter and Gamble, and Sara Lee. Coffee production, mostly on small family run farms smaller than 25 acres, is a labor intensive activity that is estimated to provide a living for 25 million families around the world. As of 2006, it was estimated that of the 141 developing countries, 95% of them depend on the production and export of commodities, such as coffee, for at least 50% of their total export earnings. That just shows how dependent some of the small, struggling countries are on coffee priduction.

I am interested to visit the coffee plantations later this week to see how they compare to some of the things I've read about coffee production so far.

First Days

We've been in Costa Rica for just a few days and it has already been a memoral experience. We have taken time the last 2 days to get aquainted with the area of San Jose inwhich we are staying. Despite the now infamous bird-poop incident, almost getting hit by a car, and getting terribly lost during a downpour, it is safe to say this is not a trip that will be easily forgotten.

I was not sure what to expect when we were first talking about our trip to Costa Rica back in Oxford. Now, after 2 nights in San Jose, I know that I have not met an unfriendly Tico. Our host family is very friendly and welcoming of us. It was intimidating at first to see houses with metal gates, bars on the windows, and sometimes barbed wire surrounding them, but now I know that that is just the way everyone does it here.

Our host-house in San Jose

Today we visited Cinde, a company that specializes is researching and marketing to international companies in the hopes that they will bring their business operations to Costa Rica. I thought it was very interesting to see how proactive they were being about securing the well-being of the Ticos by bringing in investments into the country and jobs for the people. It was also interesting to see how they do not just bring in any businesses, but seek out the ones that fit the criteria they have established that assures they will bring the most benefit to the country and the people.