Tropical Ecology 2011

Today was our last day in Costa Rica. We started off this morning traveling from Puerto Viejo to San Jose on a long 4 hour bus ride. On our way to Puerto Viejo Alex pointed out the banana plantations and told us to notice the blue bags hanging on the trees. These blue bags covered the bananas to keep animals and bugs away but these blue bags also have chemicals inside them to help the bananas not go bad and ripe as they are being transported to the states and Europe. Alex also informed us as before child labor laws were installed in Costa Rica, young boys around age 13 had a job to move the bananas to the boxes where they would get ready to be exported. Today this job is done by mules. It was neat to be able to drive by all these banana plantations and learn about/ see the banana we eat in the states.
Another interesting fact I learned from Alex on the bus ride was that there really isn't much of a difference between organic and non organic. She told us that if the fruit is organic, they that just means there are no pesticides. Therefore, the organic bananas are covered in plastic. After Alex told us this she brought up a very important point.... Organic bananas that are better for you or worse for the environment?

Carolyn Nowak
Sent from my iPhone