Is Coffee the Chief Export of Costa Rica?

Maybe not, but it's one of the exports for which Costa Rica is known.

Coffee clearly has cultural and economic significance in Costa Rica.

Before looking at the chart below, our friend and guide, Marco Vargus, takes us through a video tour of a coffee plantation in Corel Santilana where he shows how coffee beans are harvested and processed.

The highly specific tools and timely handling of the coffee beans are illustrated and show us how much care and thought goes into what makes up each cup of coffee brewed with these beans. Everyone had a great deal of info about all things coffee - it was impressive.

The owner of this particular coffee farm, Juan Leyton, has a beautiful property that is a must visit if you visit Monteverde.

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Coffee is not exactly the top dog in Costa Rica's economy

After bananas & plantains and dates, figs, pineapple, etc. (shown on the chart below) a significant portion of Costa Rica's exports are medical and orthopaedic devices. The electric and electronic categories have been on the rise over the years and are starting to compete with the medical & med supplies industry.  At a respectable 5th place is coffee. This figure has been declining over the years because growing coffee beans requires large amounts of land and other countries in Central and South America can output more product for less than Costa Rica can.

FYI: The data/information below comes from The Economic Complexity Observatory at MIT. This information is kept up to date and MIT allows use of these gorgeous charts for anyone wanting to use them on a website.

AJG Simoes, CA Hidalgo. The Economic Complexity Observatory: An Analytical Tool for Understanding the Dynamics of Economic Development. Workshops at the Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence. (2011)