Extension Communications
Extension 4-H Youth Building
Ames, Iowa 50011-3630
(515) 294-9915
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Extension Communications |
8/9/04
Contacts:
Mark Gleason, Plant Pathology, (515) 294-0597, mgleason@iastate.edu
Jean McGuire, Continuing Education and Communication Services, (515) 294-7033,
jmcguire@iastate.edu
Garden Column for the week of Aug. 13
Widening the Road: ISU's Ag Exchanges with Costa Rica
By Mark Gleason
Extension Plant Pathologist
Iowa State University
To most Iowans, Costa Rica seems a long way off. It is often confused with a similar-sounding tropical place, Puerto Rico. In reality, Costa Rica is a small Central American country, one-third the size of Iowa, located between Nicaragua and Panama. It's an increasingly common vacation destination, thanks to its lovely Pacific and Atlantic beaches, active volcanoes, and lush rain forests that feature some of the greatest biodiversity on the planet.
Costa Rica is also a significant trade partner for the U.S. As a stable democracy with the highest living standard in Central America, Costa Rica is a significant market for U.S. goods as well as an increasingly important exporter. Its leading exports are agricultural products. Because of Costa Rica's tropical climate, however, there is little competition with U.S. agricultural products.
Most people recognize that to improve our competitiveness in international trade, we need to know more about our trading partners. As a result, Iowa State University (ISU) has been emphasizing international awareness in its curriculum, especially during the past 15 years.
Many ISU student and faculty groups have visited Costa Rica, for periods of a few days to several months, to gain insights into Central American ecology, culture and agriculture. After Western European countries, in fact, Costa Rica is one of the top destinations of ISU undergraduate tour groups.
Most of the student traffic has been one way. ISU groups have sampled the joys of Costa Rica, but Costa Rican student groups have seldom visited here. Is it because Iowa is a nice place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit here?
We don't think so. For the last 5 years, faculty at ISU and the University of Costa Rica (UCR), the country's top educational institution, have arranged reciprocal student visits focused on agricultural science. Since 1999, three ISU student groups have toured Costa Rican agriculture, and three UCR groups have seen central Iowa's agriculture first-hand.
For most ISU students, Costa Rica's agriculture is stunningly diverse. From coffee plantations and potato farms at higher altitudes to bananas, mangoes, pineapple, oranges, ornamental plants, papaya and oil palm in the lowlands, Costa Rica is an amazing patchwork of agricultural variety.
Another surprise to ISU students is the remarkable level of innovation in Costa Rican agriculture. Costa Rica is among the most advanced countries in the world in application of composting technology to control agricultural wastes, in biological control of insects and diseases, and in development of farmer cooperatives. There are plenty of take-home messages from tours of Costa Rican agriculture that can improve our own trade competitiveness.
Students from UCR have encountered almost as many surprises in Iowa agriculture. The scale of our corn and bean farms is beyond anything in Costa Rica, and our giant planters and combines make a deep impression. Perhaps even more surprising to these visitors is the agricultural diversity that persists in our vast ocean of row crops. Iowa's pick-your-own fruit and vegetable farms, producers of alternative types of beans, direct marketers of dairy products, community-supported agriculture and organic herb producers that market on the Internet were both fascinating and surprising to the Costa Ricans.
Are these reciprocal travel experiences merely agri-tourism? Not if you ask the students who participate. On both sides, their attitudes toward the other country have broadened and changed forever. Cliches fall away, and the modern-day realities of each country become clear.
After their class experience, students from both countries feel a new sense of connection to the place and people they visited. That connection continues in foreign-language training (whether English or Spanish), professional internships and the spread of new ideas into the agriculture of both countries. The small investment in two-way student travel between Costa Rica and Iowa will have positive ripple effects on both sides for decades to come.
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Editors: There is no photo available for this column Yard and Garden column.
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