Today we visited both a banana and a pineapple plantation which made today the first day that we visited a plantation that did not grow or relate to the production and selling of coffee. After today it has become clear to me that coffee has to be protected much more than fruits like bananas and pineapple. When growing coffee the plantations needed to use much more chemicals like pesticides in their production and we saw no certified organic plantations. Even with the use of pesticides many of the coffee producers had to grow other plants to still act as a distractor plant for the insects. Bananas and pineapples were different as the banana farm we saw only used live walls of citronella to repell mosquitoes and other intermediary plants in between the banana plants. The pineapple plantation was organic certified and used no pesticides in their farm. Therefore, it is apparent that coffee takes much more care to keep the crop healthy and fruit producing.

While there are differences in the processes between bananas, pineapples, and coffee there are also similarities. For instance, the workers at the pineapple and coffee plantations are both most commonly from Nicaragua. The large difference between the two is the Nicaraguans working at the pineapple plantation have moved to Costa Rica since pineapples do not grow in a specific season like the coffee plants; the people working on the coffee plantations are only there from October to March picking the coffee. However the work they do collecting the pineapple, banana, and coffee are all some what similar in that they must be done by hand. The banana bunches take the most work since they have to be cut down from the plant, but both the coffee and pineapple can be collected straight from the plant.

If I had to choose a plantation to work on I would probably select a pineapple plantation. While the collection of pineapple does not seem easy by any means it does seem to be less hard labor than the others. For instance picking coffee takes carrying heavy baskets while also having to pick the small fruits off of the plant which would be painful for the fingers. Bananas again are very heavy with the bunches needing to be carried over one’s shoulder plus when cutting a banana plant down to get the banana bunch one would need to support the whole top part of the plant, again this is difficult labor to be doing all day. Pineapples on the otherhand are not too heavy and the process of collecting them off of the plant is much easier than the other two fruits. Further, when driving to the plantations we saw people collecting the pineapples and they were in a large group collecting together which would make the process even better. Therefore, if I had to work on a plantation I would choose a pineapple plantation especially since pineapple is my favorite to eat of the three.