I assume that quite some people in Europe and North America think, that in Central America, and especially in Costa Rica, most of the stuff you buy is grown or made here.

The discourse of the anti-globalisation movement has a big focus on their home societies. Since I ve lived already for a year here in Costa Rica and I ve got more into the topic of food production and distribution I m hopefully going to figure out how the system works down here.

During my first semesters here in Costa Rica we have bought the grocery for our house mostly in the PALI shop around the corner. It was cheap and looked kind of different to most of the other big supermarkets. How I figured out later it belonged (like MasXMenos, HyperMas & MaxiBodega) to Wall-mart Centroamerica. The convenient store AM-PM belongs to the BP, the worlds third largest global energy company.

These big discounter spread over the Valle Central and have some branches in bigger cities around Costa Rica. In the rural area most people buy their stuff in the Pulperias, little corner stores often run by Chinese people. This is not a real alternative to satisfy all the needs of a European or North-American if the individual is staying in Costa Rica for a long time but most of the everyday needs can be satisfied there. Obviously the stuff they sell is produced by big international companies. Most of globalisation critics would try to avoid drinking Coca Cola (for good reason) but what is the other stuff sold here in Costa Rica. Almost all the beer is produced or imported by Cervezeria Nacional aka Florida Bebidas. Somehow the Website of Florida Bebidas is down but archive.org still has some old pages. This means that the list is out of date (from 2007). Well not everybody needs beer – but even the water is by Coca Cola (Alpina) or Florida Bebidas (Cristal) – even Tropical (Ice Tea, etc.) belongs to Florida Bebidas. They distribute Pepsi, Heineken, 7Up and Gaterade. Tropical Bebidas is since 2002 divided in a real estate, a capital investing and a beverage company and expands all over central america with investments in the breweries in Panama and Nicaragua. So it s for sure not a nice local producer of lemonade.

Thats why I changed my consuming habits as much as possible buying food at the weekly markets and make lemonade with local sugar cane derived brown sugar an lemons from our garden. Now I will try to figure out where the food from the markets does come from and how it is produced.