SAN JOSÉ, COSTA RICA – Earlier this week, nearly two dozen USA Rice members and staff met with the National Association of Industrialists of the Rice Sector of Costa Rica (ANINSA), the National Rice Corporation (CONARROZ), the Industrial Consultants for Rice (CIPA), and Walmart which covers Costa Rica and Nicaragua, to discuss local production, import trends, the lack of water in the Panama Canal affecting imports, and other areas of mutual interest.
Additionally, CONARROZ, a non-governmental agency which grades and tests rice, led a tour of their laboratory and provided domestic, U.S., and Brazilian rice to sample and taste.
Local rice production in Costa Rica has drastically decreased over the past several years, from 35,000 hectares (~86,000 acres) and 530 growers two years ago to 15,000 hectares (~37,000 acres) and 350 growers now.
“Part of this reduction in local production was due to Costa Rica reducing the 35 percent tariff on rough and milled rice from all origins to 3.5 and 4 percent, respectively, in August 2022, making it cheaper to import rather than produce rice,” said Asiha Grigsby, USA Rice director of international promotion for the Western Hemisphere, who was on the tour and at the meetings. “Also, since that time, we’ve seen U.S. exports to Costa Rica fall drastically, due to not only price and availability of other origins but the sensory quality of U.S. rice which was brought up in every meeting with the trade this week.”
In Costa Rica, and Central America in general, consumers prefer rice that does not stick together, but rather maintains individual grains.
Several Costa Ricans participated in the U.S. Rice Quality Symposium at the 2023 USA Rice Outlook Conference last month (see
USA Rice Daily, December 12, 2023), and this week provided an in-depth assessment of the 26 rice varieties that were on display. Six of those varieties were then evaluated under the CONARROZ methodology in their lab and two of them scored as acceptable for color, smell, and texture.
U.S. rice exports to Costa Rica were around 75,000 tons ($25 million) in 2021 due to record high prices and lower supply from the 2022 crop, and reduced to 600 tons ($1 million) in Jan-Nov 2023.