Today, we were lucky enough to visit both a banana and plantain plantation, and a pineapple plantation. At the banana plantation, we learned how the farms grew other plants besides plantains and bananas to prevent a monoculture. They also used these other plants as food sources growing things like cassava, cherries, and ginger. The plantation also uses old banana plants as fertilizers by composting them. The pineapple plantation had some similar practices like composting old plants to be used as fertilizers. However, some of the pineapple farm’s practices differed such as, there were only pineapple plants causing lower biodiversity. Pineapple farms also used a combination of dried animal blood, fish bones, and chicken feathers as another form of fertilizer. The organic plantations we visited also used plastic bags as a way to protect crops from erosion and animals.
In terms of growing seasons pineapple plantations and banana plantations can produce fruit all year round compared to coffee, which only has one growing season. This allows farms to make a constant income year-round when planting bananas or pineapples. It also would allow the workers to have jobs all year round since there would not be only one growing season. Even though the growing seasons differ, all of these plants are exported all around the world year-round. The threats that face these plants are very similar too. Disease is one of the main problems coffee, pineapple, and banana plantations deal with. Banana plantations are generally at greater risk for this because larger plantations from name brands like Chiquita only grow one type of banana plant. To prevent this the smaller banana farms like the one we went to, grew 18 different types of bananas. Another major risk for coffee, banana, and pineapple plantations is competing with large-scale farms. Coffee and pineapple plantations tried to solve this issue by creating a good quality of crop over quantity. Coffee did this by using arabica beans and the pineapple plantations did this by growing organic pineapple plants. The banana plantation we went to dealt with this problem by using their bananas to create flour instead of just selling them whole.
If I were a plantation worker I think I would prefer to work on a pineapple plantation. This is because I would be able to work year-round due to the growing season of pineapple and I could make a wage of $40-45 a day. This would allow me to make more than at a coffee plantation because the growing season is just not long enough to make the same as at a pineapple plantation. I would also get benefits like health care and free schooling if I worked long enough and I would have a very stable job since one of Costa Rica’s biggest exports is pineapples.
