According to the 2014 VI Agricultural Census, the number of hectares planted with pineapple grew at an average rate of over 47% per year in the last 30 years, making it the permanent crop with the fastest growth.

In 1984, the country had 2,474.2 hectares devoted to this fruit, three decades later the country has 37,659.9 hectares of pineapples; i.e. there has been 1422.1% increase in the area devoted to this crop.

Other crops, such as bananas or sugar cane, grew 60.2% and 37.6%, respectively. Coffee, which is historically a traditional crop, decreased its area by 6.4% in those 30 years; however, it remains the predominant crop.

"This shows that pineapple crops didn't increase over the years because they were cultivating in new areas that were devastated or deforested, as has often been suggested. This shows that there has been a decline of other crops in the country, where exports were low, and that they started changing these products (such as rice or sugar cane) to produce pineapple," argued Abel Chaves, president of the National Chamber of Producers and Exporters of Pineapple (Canapep).

During the years under study, coffee went from 89,800 hectares to just over 84,000. Palm oil grew by 294%, going from 16,000 hectares to 66,000 hectares. Chaves stood by his premise and said that this is the thesis they have maintained when consulted by the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MINAE) and the Environmental Administrative Tribunal (TAA).

"There has been a change in crops. Many of the crops that decreased were not obliged to comply with regulations of environmental impact. If there was a change in the production culture, the land was already impacted, if there was any impact. The census demonstrates what we have been arguing: there has been a migration of other crops that changed for pineapple crops," the representative of the sector said.

Chaves said producers chose to change their crops for pineapple because of the economic success of exports in their two main markets (Europe and USA).

"It's impossible to grow more"

The representative considered that the cultivation of pineapple won't grow in large proportions and that they now had to consolidate the existing production area.

"We see a similar behaviour to what has been going on in the banana sector. The bananas promotion plan led to a growth in the sector, but only in the areas where it was grown. In the case of pineapple, growth occurred because the producers who cultivated other crops in different areas of the country, found a boom in its production," Chaves said.

Differences in dataThe president of the Environmental Federation (Fecon), Mauricio Alvarez, said that, according to the data they had regarding pineapple exports, the country has between 60,000 and 70,000 hectares devoted to pineapple crops.

"There are other databases of land, which are about to be made public, which show there are more hectares devoted to pineapples. The data doesn't even match the data what we've been told before because we've always spoke about 45,000 hectares and I do not think it is lower than what has been said. Ultimately, this expansion is visible and no one has doubts about the impact it has had and that has already been reported or questioned," concluded the environmental leader.

Source - http://www.freshplaza.com