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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Nicaragua
Index
Cotton was Nicaragua's second biggest export earner in
the
1980s. A latecomer to Nicaraguan agriculture, cotton
became
feasible as an export crop only in the 1950s, when
pesticides
were developed that permitted high yields in tropical
climates.
Cotton soon became the crop of choice for large landowners
along
the central Pacific coast. As the amount of land under
cultivation grew, however, erosion and pollution from the
heavy
use of pesticides became serious problems. Lack of credit
for
planting, a drop in world cotton prices, and competition
from
Chile discouraged cotton production in the mid-1980s.
Production
of cotton dropped significantly in the 1980s, and the 1989
crop
of 22,000 tons was less than a third of that produced in
1985.
Data as of December 1993
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