After our long and exhausting free day at the beach on and on the catamaran on Sunday, we had an early start to our final week in Costa Rica 😢. We had delicious banana pancakes for breakfast. The rest of the day presented us with two tours, one at a banana plantation and the second at a pineapple plantation. It was raining hard on the way to the tours but not as much on the way back. It’s really cool to be in the middle of the change from the dry to wet season!

Our first tour was of the banana plantation given by Franciny González. Covid times were huge for the plantation. They were closed for almost 2 years, but this was not entirely a bad thing. They used this time to figure out an issue of their, banana bread. Exporting banana bread was tough for them. So during this time they decided to make their own flour so that instead of it coming ready, people can make their own banana bread. Once they opened again, their business model consisted of tourism and as a processing plant. At the processing plant, they grow bananas and they produce flour for many things such as cookies or pancakes (it might have been the same one as we had for breakfast 🥞). At the end of this tour, we had the opportunity to volunteer to help make patacones. Being the gentleman that I am, I volunteered. Once they were fried, I pressed down using the machine or two cutting boards to flatten them. Then they were fried once again.

Our second tour of the day was of the pineapple plantation roaming through the farm in a vehicle being pulled by a tractor (hope that makes sense). Costa Rica is the top producer of pineapples in the entire world 🤯. The country as a whole produces 2 million tons a year and 95% of all of the organic pineapples in the world. This is nuts considering that the country is smaller than West Virginia! 

Comparing what we learned about the supply chains of today’s tours to last week’s tours of coffee, the main difference is that pineapples and bananas go directly from supplier to distributer while coffee has to go from supplier to manufacturer to distributor. 

Both the banana and pineapple plantations presented ways that they were sustainable. Starting with the banana plantation, they make over 15 different varieties of bananas on their plantation so that there is a smaller chance of a cloning mishap from occurring. For example, if all were the same variety and one of them would get infected, all of them would get infected. Having variety gives this from occurring a less of a chance. Another thing, ripe bananas are not wasted, they are used to create another product. The product is like a flour, but mainly has sugar. The pineapple plantation also does sustainability in their own way as well. For example, they use fertilizers that are natural raw materials, such as animal blood. They also reintegrate pineapples for future pineapples, other farms use illegal fertilizer chemicals that kill the plants. Both plantations also take care of their employees. Employees mainly come from Nicaragua because of the minimum wage being the third highest in the America’s, being better than Nicaragua’s as they are one of the lowest. They also grow crops on the farm so that they do not have to go to the market to spend more money on them.

Both plantations have threats too. Starting with bananas, they have a chance of being contaminated by fucarion. This is a fungus that attacks bananas. To prevent this from occurring, they try their best not allowing bananas to touch the ground. Something else, their plants sometimes don’t absorb as much water as they need, so they modify the leaves that are used so that there is a tube that goes through the plant that leads water in. Lastly, they can only produce 30 kilos of banana s with the sun, which is highly unpredictable. They have a machine that is supposed to produce 600 kilos every eight hours. However, they don’t have the budget for this just yet. Moving on to the pineapple plantation, they can’t have too much water in their soil. Why not? Because if there is too much water in the soil, the soil will rot. To prevent this from occurring they drain the water from the soil every once in a while to make sure that the optimum amount is in. Another threat for them is erosion. To avoid erosion and to produce a lower temperature as well as allow sunlight to get photosynthesis, they use plastic to cover the soil. One more threat is the threat of moths. Moths lay eggs on the pineapples. So to counteract this, they control the pests with garlic and chili because that is no bueno for those pests!

If I had to choose a career working at a coffee plantation, a banana plantation, or a pineapple plantation I would choose the banana plantation (assuming I am a farmer 🧑‍🌾). First of all, they get paid more than a coffee farmer, money is important to me. Secondly, I get an arm workout by lifting the heavy bananas 💪 (I need the gains). Lastly, they care about their workers. They had a kitchen on the plantation where they would cook food and they grew more crops so that they don’t have to purchase at the market.