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 24 farm forest = ecotourists DHJanzen100039.jpg high resolution
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This tells it all. And it is not nearly as much in jest as it may appear. The value in foreign income to Costa Rica of the ecotourist crop - nearly a billion dollars in 2000 - is more than the combined value of the three largest traditional export crops - coffee, cattle and bananas (and Costa Rica, with 50,000 hectares of banana plantations, is the second largest banana exporter in the neotropics). On some thermometers, the Minister of Tourism is handling a more important portfolio than is the Minister of Agriculture. And ecotourists can read, and they are much easier to control than are cattle, when it comes to ranching them. |
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