Today, we headed back to Sarapiquí, but to two different farms. The first one we headed to was a small banana farm, owned by Francini, an upcoming entrepreneur. She focuses on growing bananas, but grows many other plants around the field as well. From avocados, to limes, to cas. This all helps the bananas grow stronger with the nutrients in the soil. She has bees on the farm, but these are not like the regular types of bees we are usually familiar to. These bees are small, stingless bees that pollinate the flowers of the other plants and keep the plants alive. She has small little bee hives for them around the plantation to spread out their area of pollination. They also produce rich, and yummy honey for her!

Some barriers to entry that exist for someone like Francini are competition from larger international companies, like the big 3 that she mentioned, Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte, and environmental challenged. Mainly, Francini must navigate through the regulations the big 3 companies set involving crop spacing and chemical applications. The big 3 company wanted 2 and a half meters between each line of plants and 2 meters between each plant, however, Francini has a smaller farm, so her line of plants are 2 meters apart and 1 and half meters between each plant. Additionally, she does not wrap the bananas in a blue plastic bag when harvesting them like the big three companies do. The blue plastic bags are lined with insecticides, but she believes the bananas should remain chemical free.

The community supports Francini by engaging in sustainable practices such as using cow and chicken poop and compost in the soil. They also work with a Costa Rican university for research, which allows Francini to collect bad fungus and mix it with a different form of fungus that kills the first fungus, making it an antagonist fungus. She wants to continue her research and test for longer than just 15 minutes, so the community helps her test different fungi.

At the second farm we went to, we walked through the forest to learn about a few different types of plants they grow there. Based on the crops we saw today and ones we’ve seen in the past, they are different in the way their grown in harvested mostly because of cultivation methods and their harvest timelines. For instance, the bananas usually take 9-12 months from the flower to growing into a banana. Something interesting about this though is that the leaves on the plant protect the plant by having a narrow canal in the middle to provide the perfect collection of water the plant needs and then dumping the rest so it doesn’t become overwatered and grow fungus. In addition, it takes 2 years for peppercorn to turn into a flower and then from there, it takes 5 months to harvest the flower to peppercorn. As for cacao pods, it takes 5-6 months to grow and harvest and coconuts take 5 months to harvest. If you wait any longer to harvest the coconuts, they will begin to ferment. These all differ than the coffee and pineapple we saw last week, as their harvesting timelines are all different.