Sustainable Agriculture

By Gabrielle Mendelsohn

Last week our class visited Don Roberto’s coffee plantation near Las Cruces Biological Station in the Puntarenas Province of Costa Rica. There, we discussed his management practices and the obstacles he and other farm owners face to operating farms sustainably. Roberto’s farm is a shade coffee plantation with a variety of crops and plants strategically grown to improve soil quality and reduce erosion. These strategies are particularly important for his farm, which had previously been used as pasture land, degrading the soil quality. One success story we heard was that he was able to bring water back to the two springs on his property by reforesting the areas surrounding them. While Roberto has been able to make these environmentally sustainable changes on his farm, many small-scale farms do not have the financial means, resources, or the will to do the same. Competition with large, profit-driven, industrial producers and a lack of local consumer awareness or demand for sustainable, fair trade, or organic products also limits the ability of farmers to make the transition to more sustainable agricultural practices.

            Agriculture is a major global driver of deforestation and a large source of pollution from high inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides. This has a variety of direct and indirect impacts on the environment, including exacerbating climate change and contributing to biodiversity loss. However, on the other hand, millions of people, particularly those in developing countries, depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. This presents a large challenge of reconciling the need to protect people’s welfare and financial needs with ensuring the environment is healthy and protected for current and future generations. Listening to Roberto speak about his personal experiences with agriculture, I thought about the connections between them and what we heard from Don Carlos on our visit to Cuerici about owning land, and the video “Black Gold” we watched on coffee farms in Ethiopia, and how important it is to emphasize and recognize the intersections between environmental, social, and economic challenges.

            There are many approaches to finding and implementing solutions to daunting global environmental and social problems such as those posed by agriculture. From what I have learned in Costa Rica and in my prior education, I think the only solutions that are sustainable and will have lasting positive impacts are those that are integrative. Solutions must address not only conservation needs, but also social ones, and must work from multiple perspectives, such as policy, science, and with local communities. Research, such as the kind we carried out on coffee plantations this past week, investigating the differences in seed predation between sun and shade coffee plantations, can be applied to policies and management decisions, and be used to help educate farmers on what practices will protect both their crops and their land. Since I have been interested in sustainable agriculture for a long time and hope to learn more about approaches and solutions to improving the industry, it was really interesting for me to be able to speak first hand with people contributing to those solutions.