In Costa Rica's dry northwestern pasture lands, where the sky stretches on forever and hump-backed Brahman cattle lounge under spreading Guanacaste trees, the sight of cowboys herding cattle on horseback is becoming less common and soon may be a rarity. Once known worldwide for its lean beef, Costa Rica is moving away from an industry that has provided, after coffee and bananas, one of the Latin American country's main exports since the 1950s.
New kid on the block
More than one million tourists visited Costa Rica in 1999, according to The Economist Intelligence Unit. Tourism eclipsed coffee and bananas as Costa Rica's biggest industry, driving land prices sky high as foreign investors clamor to build hotels and golf courses. Tourist traffic is expected only to get heavier, especially since the Promotora de Turismo is being set up this year to promote Costa Rica as a tourist destination abroad.
Making things even more difficult for the agricultural sector, independent small farms are being sold to foreign-owned agricultural conglomerates such as Chiquita, and small farmers and laborers are finding that they must move to the cities to find service-related jobs to support their families.
These changes happened relatively suddenly, when Costa Rica's rapid expansion of industry through the 1970s ended in economic collapse for the country in the 1980s. Teetering on bankruptcy, the Costa Rican government had to borrow heavily from private international banks, which insisted that Costa Rica diversify its range of non-traditional exports. Oil prices spiked world-wide. Inflation and interest rates shot up, as did unemployment and impoverishment.
Where's the beef?
Throughout the maelstrom of Costa Rica's economic troubles, the price of beef remained the same, despite sharply rising costs for labor, fuel and machinery. The beef that sold for $1.10 a pound in 1980 sells for 98 cents a pound today.
"Beef has not improved in price for the last 25 years," says Guillermo Brenes, 81, owner of the ranch Joaquin tends. "A business like that--it cannot be profitable."
Guillermo's 50-year-old son, Edouardo Brenes, is the general manager of the family's seven ranches, which each cover 450 to 500 hectares of flat lowland. The Brenes family runs a cow-calf operation, producing 400 bull calves yearly.
"Better times for the cattle industry was when the owners paid less for labor," Edouardo says. "Now the opportunities are not on the farms. They're in tourism and building and services. Many of the people who used to work for us no longer work on the farms--they now work in the big hotels."
Winners and losers
It's not an entirely bleak picture for everyone, however. With the international attention paid to the destruction of the rainforests in the 1980s, environmentalists have recently gotten large chunks of land designated as wildlife preservation areas. Forests that ranchers cut down during the cattle boom that lasted three decades, a time period in which 57,000 hectares of rainforest were axed yearly, are now being replanted.
Today, Costa Rica earns more money by preserving its rainforests than it did by clear-cutting them for cattle, according to the online Trade Environment Database.
But for Joaquin Arguedas Chaves, 32, the ranchkeeper of a 50-year-old Brenes cattle ranch outside of Santa Cruz, changes in environment and economics mean that he cannot live off the land the way his father and grandfather did.
"Since I was a little kid, my goal has been to be a farmer," Joaquin says. "I expect someday to make some money and buy a farm, if God helps me," he says. I'm a hard worker, and I'd like to have my own farm someday."
But sheer desire and a strong work ethic aren't enough any more for a laborer to make the transition to landowner. Pulling in a monthly paycheck of 75,000 colones (about $200 U.S.), the sole income for his family of six, Joaquin's dreams of buying a farm may be out of reach. And for Edouardo, the legacy he and his family spent 60 years building is on the verge of collapse. The family keeps its cattle ranches afloat through other investments including real estate, hay making, mango exports and machinery rentals.
The family plans to ride the tourism boom the way the family rode the cattle boom 50 years earlier. They will develop the land they own between Santa Cruz and the Pacific beaches for hotels, Edouardo says. They will reduce their herds and implement creative solutions to squeeze every last colone out of their gasping business.
"It's making the difference between winning and losing," Edouardo says. "[But] I don't think ... we're going to break even."
And with the slow death of the cattle industry comes heartbreak for those who have invested a lifetime of work. "If I leave this place, I'll die of boredom and sadness," Guillermo says. "I was born next to a cow."
Hanging on for dear life
Moving across the hill-bordered pasture at a fast trot, I struggle to stay in the saddle. My stirrups hang too long, and my legs dangle uselessly against my sweating horse's sides. Having no reins, I clutch a rope knotted around the saddle-- the horse's mane is cropped too closely for me to cling to.
Joaquin leads my horse by a rope behind his mule. I ride where he takes me, every bone in my spine feeling like it's being ground to a powder as I bounce and jerk on my mount. Despite my increasing discomfort, I feel exhilarated and shout, "Rapido!" at Joaquin, urging him to take us faster.
Like the Costa Rican farmers and ranchers, being towed helplessly toward an unknown destination by the changing economy, I grimly hang on, more out of pride and determination than out of hope for a safe, comfortable ride.