I liked the different angles and insight offered behind the sociopolitical problems that spur the destruction of the rainforests in Costa Rica. Land insecurity with the poor, lack of political competency and democracy, and the unsustainable agricultural practices that revolve around slash and burn for cash crops and alike intensive forms- together are responsible for the problems and degradation of the rainforest. However, when facing these problems to form a solution, it is found that not much can really be done, for economy depends on the agriculture, and the agriculture depends on the dirt, and dirt cannot provide the nutrients necessary for the desirable yields given its high acidity and the natural communities and landscapes of the rainforest have evolved to these conditions to the extent, such that it is a grim and almost hopeless endeavor to resolve in any agricultural basis that is beyond the extent of what agroforestry and micro-agroenvironments have to offer.
One comes to the conclusion that their agriculture is failing in part, because they’re selling away their soil in form of export, most notably the banana. Thus, “the connection between the knife that slices the banana into our cereal bowl and the chainsaw that slices tree trunks onto the forest floor”. So, when it comes down to it, the only real way to stop problems of rainforest destruction and social inequality in similar tropical dilemnas, is up to us consumers and our abilities to thwart, deny, and boycott the trades of bananas and timber and destructive products alike that our perpetuated by the economic anxiety that is fumed by international banks.
