Pineapple

Costa Rica's pineapple boom raises environmental questions - 08/28/2008 - MiamiHerald.com

AGRICULTURE
Costa Rica's pineapple boom raises environmental questions
Many environmentalists and residents say the explosive growth in pineapple production in Costa Rica has outpaced the government's ability to regulate it.

BY DAVE SHERWOOD

Special to The Miami Herald

DAVE SHERWOOD / FOR THE MIAMI HERALD

Three of every four pineapples consumed in the United States originates in Costa Rica.

Gallery | Pineapple boom raising questions
EL CAIRO, Costa Rica -- The raucous

honking of a cistern truck carrying potable water rouses residents from
their homes here each morning, clanging plastic bottles and tin pots in
hand.

''When will it stop,'' says 64-year-old Rufina Najera, lugging
a yellow 5-gallon pail stained with dirt to the roadside. ``The
pineapple companies tell us the water is clean, but the government
won't let us drink it.''

Last year, authorities detected small
amounts of Bromacil, a pesticide used to thwart insects from pineapple
plants, in the local aquifer. Since then, the government has delivered
water by truck to nearly 6,000 people.

The crisis has spawned an
increasingly volatile movement among residents, who last week blocked
the country's principal export artery, Route 32, between the capital of
San José and the Caribbean port city of Limón, leaving hundreds of cars
and trucks stranded for hours.

More than 60 prominent Costa Rican
university scientists and environmental groups joined the chorus of
protest in July, citing water pollution and extreme erosion and
demanding a moratorium on new pineapple plantations in ``areas of high
biodiversity.''

Costa Rica bridges the gap between North and
South America, and is said to house 5 percent of the Earth's
biodiversity in just .03 percent of its land mass, according to the
country's National Biodiversity Institute.

Pineapple companies contend the reports are exaggerated -- and that they've cleaned up their act, and local aquifers.

''Where
there are problems, we've worked to solve them,'' says Abel Chaves,
president of the country's National Pineapple Producer and Exporter's
Chamber. ``If allegations remain, they should be investigated, and if a
company is found guilty, it should be charged.''

But many
environmentalists and residents say the explosive growth in pineapple
production in Costa Rica has outpaced the government's ability to
regulate it. Legal loopholes, poor enforcement and lacking public
health standards, they say, have placed communities, and ecosystems, at
risk.

Pineapple plantations, riding a boom that began when Coral
Gables-based fruit company Fresh Del Monte introduced the ''Gold''
pineapple in 1996, have sprawled from nearly 30,000 acres in 2000 to
more than 100,000 acres -- outpacing coffee, African palms and bananas
as Costa Rica's fastest-growing export crop, according to the country's
2007 State of the Nation report.

Three of every four pineapples
consumed in the United States -- 580,000 metric tons -- now originate
from Costa Rica, says Alberto Jerardo, of the U.S. Department of
Agriculture.

Exports from Costa Rica, meanwhile, have tripled in value with rising demand, from $159 million in 2002 to $505 million in 2007.

But
the music stopped in April, when the country's Environmental Tribunal,
Costa Rica's highest environmental court, called the burgeoning export
industry to task, placing 26 plantations under investigation for abuses
ranging from the illegal clearing of forest to water contamination and
violation of riverine buffer zones.

The revelations prompted a closer look at industry practices.

Bernardo
Vargas, executive director of the pineapple chamber, says his growers
responded immediately to concerns, issuing a series of
''social-environmental commitments,'' designed to reduce waste,
conserve soil and water and uphold environmental laws.

Many say the nature of large-scale pineapple plantations could make such promises hard to keep.

Jorge
Lobo, a University of Costa Rica biologist, says the regional trend
toward large-scale industrial monoculture is alarming, particularly in
an area so rich in rainfall and biodiversity.

Along the Caribbean
slope, just 18 pineapple producers now manage nearly 40,000 acres. In a
nearby province to the north, roughly the same acreage is divided among
more than 1,000 growers, according to pineapple chamber statistics.

''It's
a different kind of agriculture, much more intensive, and more
problematic,'' says Lobo, who adds that pineapple -- unlike coffee,
another traditional export -- requires direct sunlight for optimal
growth and thus, the absence of trees and forest cover, which help
prevent erosion in areas of heavy rainfall.

Locals say they are already feeling the effects.

On
a recent rainy afternoon, Mario Vargas, a small farmer from La Perla, a
Caribbean town now surrounded by vast green swaths of pineapple fields,
pointed out a series of creeks and rivers running the color of
chocolate near his home. It's proof, he believes, that not enough is
being done.

''Before the pineapple arrived, these rivers ran
clean,'' he said. ``Why should we be forced to trade our forests and
clean water for jobs?''

La Perla's aquifer, explains Vargas, is
still safely tucked away in cloud-shrouded mountains, watched over by
keel-billed toucans and howler monkeys. But as pineapple plantations
continue to expand and move uphill, he and others worry they could be
next.

Chaves, of the pineapple chamber, says increasingly
paranoid locals have come to blame everything -- water contamination,
skin lesions, illnesses -- on pineapple plantations.

''The fact is, there are very few studies that prove these connections,'' he said.

Here, as elsewhere, the pineapple boom caught the country unprepared.

Unlike
the United States and Europe, Costa Rica has never had potable water
standards for such agro-chemicals as Bromacil, said Health Minister
Maria Luisa Avila. The Ministry, she said, drafted a decree last month
that would set new limits, a critical first step, she said, to solving
the problem.

''We're looking to strike a balance, so that the
communities and the pineapple plantations can live in harmony,'' said
Avila, who has met with both sides in recent weeks.

Local residents are as quick to blame government regulators as they are the pineapple growers.

As
demand for this sweet, vitamin-rich fruit grows in the United States
and Europe, many large-scale banana plantations, once the mainstay of
the region, have swapped to the more profitable pineapple.

But a
loophole in the country's laws exempts most firms operating before 2004
-- the majority of banana-turned-pineapple plantations -- from
submitting environmental impact studies.

Gerardo Fuentes, mayor
of the canton of Guacimo, says the recent boom has also attracted a
sort of ''gold rush'' of newcomers, who buy and clear large tracts of
land, then plant pineapple without appropriate permits.

The mayor blames sloppy central government oversight.

Case in point, he said, is that of Setena, the national institution charged with environmental permitting.

Last
year, Setena received an environmental impact study from pineapple
grower TicoVerde, in which the company referenced pelicans and
mangroves (coastal species not found in Guacimo) and squirrel monkeys
(a species limited to the central and southern Pacific coast).

Despite such glaring errors, Setena approved the study in June.

Vigilant
locals, who have learned to scour government documents, cried foul. The
municipality declared a moratorium on new pineapple seeding and filed a
lawsuit against Setena, demanding TicoVerde's environmental permits be
revoked.

Setena officials did not reply to repeated phone calls and requests for interviews by press time.

Until
such issues are clarified, environmentalists say they will insist on a
moratorium on new pineapple seeding -- and a zero-tolerance policy for
agro-chemicals in their water supplies.

Lourdes Brenes, director
of Foro Emaus, an umbrella organization for 22 community action groups
that has spearheaded the fight, says the idea is not to shut down the
pineapple industry.

''We simply want them to obey the law, and the government to enforce it,'' she said.