Agriculture, Forests and Individuals: The Environmental Conflict in Costa Rica, 1880–2021

Abstract

In the final decades of the nineteenth century, a robust agricultural system based on subsistence crops, extensive cattle raising, export products and extraction of forests and fine woods was consolidated in Costa Rica. It was based on liberal ideas in force since the 1820s of progress, colonisation and modernity. These liberal policies that encouraged the occupation of vacant lots, privatisation of land and granting incentives to farmers ensured the expansion of export agriculture – whose main products were coffee, cocoa, sugarcane, cotton, bananas and livestock – together with cultivation of basic grains and other foods such as vegetables and legumes, intended to supply family units, and the colonisation processes that expanded the agricultural frontier towards peripheral regions (Morera 2011).