Costa Rica’s National Chamber of Pineapple Producers (Canapep) expects to end the year with $100 million worth of lost pineapple exports, and growers are blaming climate change which they say has been affecting the country’s agriculture sector since 2013 but has led to an especially significant increase in extreme weather in recent months.
Canapep said it expects pineapple exports will end the year with a decline of some 25 million boxes due to floods and extreme weather that swept through the entire Atlantic region this year, affecting 28,000 hectares out of 38,000 hectares of the country’s pineapple plantations.
In June, extreme rainfall in the region left hundreds of people displaced and forced President Luis Guillermo Solis to declare a state of emergency.
Worse still, the situation could continue and even worsen throughout the remainder of the year, according to experts who convened at the Central America Climate Forum held in Honduras recently.
Pineapple growers currently provide some 27,000 direct jobs in the country.
Costa Rica’s Central Bank revised down its growth forecast for this year late last month, citing falling pineapple and banana exports as one of the significant causes of the slowdown.
Pineapple exports fell by 14 percent while banana exports fell by 23 percent during the first quarter of the year, Costa Rica’s foreign trade promotion agency, PROCOMER, reported in April.
