Socioecological transformations at the specialized productive space in coffee and sugarcane in the context of the Green Revolution. Costa Rica (1955–1973)

Abstract

This paper provides new evidence on the energy balances and energy returns of the agricultural systems specialized in coffee and sugarcane (SPS_CS) in Costa Rica between 1955 and 1973, during the peak of the Green Revolution. The analysis is developed in the Costa Rican region of that the 1955 Agricultural Census characterized as specialized in these productions of coffee and sugarcane and using the concept of Specialized Productive Spaces (SPS) developed by the researchers. Based on this regionalization as system boundaries, the authors proposed carrying out a retrospective historical analysis (1955 and 1973) to show, from the Social Metabolism approach and the multi-Energy Return on Investment (multi-EROI) accountings, the different exchanges of experience in the material and energy flows interlinking the agroecosystem funds and functioning and materials from a historical perspective. The findings suggest that this Costa Rican productive space (SPS_CS) presents moved from an agroecosystem with low energy efficiency in energy terms in 1955 that tended to improve towards an improved one in 1973, contrary to what happened in other countries of the Global North though only in the socioeconomic flows, which does not imply that the bioconversion chains have not been simplified. Results also conclude that subsistence mixed cropping may have contributed to a slower deterioration of energy efficiency in the SPS_CS. Other agroecological energy indicators more potentially related to farm-associated biodiversity show the other side of the coin: increased agrifood yields through a reduction in the total amount of photosynthesized biomass, in reused biomass by farmers, and in recirculated biomass through direct intake by non-domesticated species. As these internal recirculating flows help reproduce the living funds of agroecosystems, their contraction undermined nature-based ecosystem services that were replaced by an increase in external industrial inputs that, even as they grew, in those Costa Rican areas still held up comparatively low in the total energy throughput.