a banana farm whose main business is producing biodiversity

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RIO SIXAOLA IS A BA­NANA FARM in Costa Rica one of the first two Rain­forest Al­liance Cer­ti­fied farms in the world. It con­tains the only in­tact man­grove swamp on the At­lantic coast, and La Amistad In­ter­na­tional Park, a World Her­itage site that pro­tects the largest area of undis­turbed high­land wa­ter­sheds and forests in southern Cen­tral America. It is an in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned model of sustainability.

“Early in its sus­tain­ability journey, the farm em­braced farming tech­niques that pro­tect water—like man­u­ally weeding in­stead of using harmful her­bi­cides, filling ir­ri­ga­tion canals with veg­e­ta­tion that fil­ters out sed­i­ment and im­pu­ri­ties, and re­for­esting the banks of the trib­u­taries that run di­rectly into the ocean.

Se­lec­tive manual weeding, rather than toxic her­bi­cide use, also al­lows ground cover to nourish the soil and help it re­tain moisture. 

Río Sixaola is al­ready 100 per­cent carbon-neutral, and its goal is to have a total of 70,000 trees that pro­vide refuge and food to local fauna, in­cluding 72 dif­ferent na­tive and en­dan­gered an­imal species he mon­i­tors with hidden cameras.”

The above is taken from the ar­ticle “Pro­ducing Bio­di­ver­sity” on a Costa Rican Ba­nana Farm” on the Rain­forest Al­liance website.

Te read the en­tire ar­ticle, click HERE.

Se­lec­tive manual weeding, rather than toxic her­bi­cide use, al­lows ground cover to nourish the soil and help it re­tain mois­ture. Click To Tweet

ClimateChangeCartoon Chappatte Mars 600

Car­toon by Patrick Chap­patte for The New York Times.

 

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