13 7,000 6 1,167
14 164,500(*) 8 20,562(*)
15 10,500 6 1,750
16 3,500 5 700
17 21,750 8 2,719
18 35,000 5 700
19 1,750 4 437
20 GARDEN 4 -----
21 1,900 2 950
22 ------(**) 3 -----
23 10,500 3 3,500
24 14,000 4 3,500
25 13,500 7 1,929
26 15,750 6 2,625
27 17,000 5 3,400
28 3,500 5 700
29 6,800 10 680
30 21,000 6 3,500
31 45,000 11 4,090
32 35,000 1 35,000
33 GARDEN 6 -----
34 ------(**) 4 -----
35 ------(**) 5 -----
36 3,500 5 700
37 1,750 9 194
38 2,000 11 181
39 18,000 3 6,000
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 446,552 M2 214 -----
AVERAGE 11,750 M2 5.5 2,167
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(*) Not included in average or total (area in Prot. Zone)
(**) Numeric data was not obtained
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Already, among the farming families interviewed, one third of these cultivated land that was not their own, farming instead, land that was rented or lent to them. Otherwise, they did not have access to any land at all (see Table No. 4). Thus among the farming families in San Antonio, one fourth of the land under agricultural production was land they did not own (see Table No. 5).
TABLE NO. 4
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAND TENURE REGIME
OF 58 AGRICULTURAL FAMILIES IN SAN ANTONIO, 1997
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAND TENURE REGIME NO. OF FAMILIES %
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OWN LAND 33 56.9
OWN LAND AND RENT LAND 6 10.3
WITHOUT LAND, ONLY RENT 11 19.0
WITHOUT LAND, ONLY BORROW 5 8.6
NO ACCESS TO LAND 3 5.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 58 100%
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TABLE NO. 5
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TENURE AND AREAS OF AGRICULTURAL LAND
OF 58 FARMING FAMILIES IN SAN ANTONIO, 1997
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAND TENURE REGIME AREA (HAS.) %
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OWN LAND 44.66 73.5
RENTED LAND 12.90 21.2
BORROWED LAND 3.18 5.2
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 60.74 100%
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The parceling of land for inheritance equally among sons and daughters has been a common practice among farming families in San Antonio. This has resulted in a situation of minifundios, or extremely small pieces of land for each family. Although in the past this tendency was countered by purchasing other pieces of land in the same district, allowing the subsequent generations to continue cultivating sufficient amounts of land, by the 1990s this option was practically impossible. In the decade of the nineties the prices of land climbed vertiginously, becoming inaccessible to farming families. The tendency of an irreversible parcelization of land until the lots could only fit a home on them threatened the persistence of farmers in San Antonio de Escazú. Those small farmers who still retained a piece of arable land counted their blessings.
"Thanks be to God, I have half an hectare," Nino said to me the first time I met him. "Because we farmers are being pushed out from here. Don't you see that all this land is becoming residential. But it is the people's own fault. They don't want to fight for their rights. A bunch of Gringos are coming here and they hoodwink us, we who are humble folk, paying any amount of dollars for the land. And I have seen many people selling needlessly. The most foolish thing is to sell the land. The land is something that doesn't have a price. They are cornering us and soon they will do away with us all. The thing is that this has become residential. Then come the road taxes, sewers, garbage collection, and the property taxes go up and many of us cannot pay. So, with paved roads, electricity, and water, the Gringos come and buy this up. What we have to do here is to hold on to the land as far as we can, and sell only as a last resort. (Field notes, May 23, 1992).
The demographic tendencies, the rising property taxes and land prices, the inability of campesinos of San Antonio to compete with "First Worlders" to buy the land in their own home town, were just some of the macro tendencies an NGO, or community organization like CODECE could not tackle, but that the community itself had to contend with. In addition to these, there were other more overarching macro-tendencies, even less susceptible to change by local organizations. These included global processes, such as an increased liberalization and interconnectedness of the global economy, the transnationalization of capital and production, including agricultural production, the decreased sovereignty of Third World States, the decreased interest of the State in national support systems for farmers and workers. The list goes on.
These may be, however, the very factors which most impinge on the sustainability of local communities such as the community of small farmers around the Mountains of Escazú. If CODECE could not be expected to transform these macro tendencies, the small farmers of San Antonio had to confront these issues, developing their own means to sustain their lifeworld, coming up with their own measures of sustainable development.
Campesino Measures of Sustainability
It is interesting to note that the majority of the land sold in San Antonio to outsiders in the last ten years were coffee farms. Many farmers explained that with raised property taxes, with the high cost of coffee pickers during harvest time, and with the lowered coffee prices, "coffee no longer pays for itself". Thus, many small farmers changed from the extensive cultivation of coffee, to a very intensive cultivation of vegetables. If at one time coffee represented the main crop of San Antonio, in the 1990s vegetable growing prevailed, with one third of the farming families dedicated exclusively to their cultivation, as compared to only less than seven percent of the farming families dedicated exclusively to coffee (see Table No. 6).
TABLE NO. 6
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAND USE REGIME OF AGRICULTURAL LANDS IN 1977
BY 58 AGRICULTURAL FAMILIES IN SAN ANTONIO, ESCAZU
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LAND USE NO. % AREA %
REGIME FAMILIES HAS.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONLY VEGETABLES 19 32.8 19.7 22.8
ONLY COFFEE 4 6.9 5.6 6.5
COMBINATIONS AND OTHERS 35 60.3 61.2 70.7
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOTAL 58 100 86.5 100
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contrary to coffee, which required many workers during a brief ha