The main parameters to grow heart of palm are plenty of sunlight and water. This works out well for the plantation we visited today, which was on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, because of how much rain that side usually gets: there’s a joke that on the Caribbean side, there’s the dry season, the wet season, and the really wet season. Heart of palm, as opposed to coffee plants, can be grown in coastal areas as they generally do not require the higher altitudes that coffee plants need in order to thrive. Both types of plants require a lot of sunlight and water, though.

Something I noticed on the heart of palm farm today was that, like most coffee farms in Costa Rica, the farmers minimalize waste as much as they can in order to maximize sustainability. Just as the coffee farmers reuse the coffee berry skins as fertilizer for other coffee plants, the heart of palm farmers repurpose the sliced-off palmito shells as compost. The shells eventually turn into mulch, which prevents weeds from growing and helps the soil retain moisture.

A possible challenge that palmito farmers may face, in regards to sourcing, is finding labor for these plantations as they grow in size. The farm we visited today was smaller, and family-owned. There were only two workers from Nicaragua on the plant, as opposed to the much greater amount of immigrant workers employed by larger industrial palmito plants that need to rely more on immigrant labor to keep up with their rates of exportation. This made me wonder that if a small, family-owned plantation wanted to expand its plantation size and start exporting on a larger scale, would they have to forfeit their marketing point of being family-owned as they likely turn more towards immigrant labor?