Cacao culture has received but little attention in Costa Rica, because the more profitable coffee plantations absorb all the time and capital. The number of plantations regularly established up to 1888 was 198, having in all 56,426 trees that yielded in the same year 331,900 pounds valued at 165,770 pesos. Most of the cacao was cultivated in Aserri, Atenas, Naranjo, Heredia, Paraiso, Guanacaste and Limon.
Cacao was exported from 1884 to 1889 as follows:
| Years. | Pounds. | Value in Dollars. |
| 1884 | 9,927 | 3,227 |
| 1885 | 16,271 | 4,084 |
| 1886 | 5,776 | 2,223 |
| 1887 | 10,906 | 4,708 |
| 1888 | 18,410 | 3,576 |
| 1889 | 28,830 | 12,386 |
| Total | 90,120 | 30,204 |
Excellent cacao was grown during Spanish colonial days around Matina, but none is exported now.
With respect to wheat, up to 1860 there was sufficient for the consumption of the country. It was so intelligently cultivated that the finer grades were produced. The rise in the price of coffee and the competition with the flour of the United States and Chile drove out the native wheat almost entirely, and to-day the cultivation of this grain is badly neglected. To-day the only flour-mill in this country grinds imported wheat.
Tobacco was a monopoly for many years, and only recently has the culture been taken up by the people.
Other important agricultural products are rice, beans, corn and potatoes.
The cultivation of rice in Costa Rica demands very little care and no irrigation to produce two crops a year of a very superior quality. Beans and corn are successfully grown everywhere in the country, while the raising of potatoes is almost wholly confined to the hillsides of Cartago and Alajuela, where they acquire an extremely fine quality.
According to the census of 1892, the average annual production of these crops for that and the two preceding years was in liters as follows:
| Corn. | Beans. | Rice. | Potatoes. | |
| San José | 8,394,527 | 1,842,527 | 236,543 | 7,915 |
| Alajuela | 6,898,549 | 999,652 | 867,528 | .. |
| Cartago | 7,874,642 | 1,724,628 | .. | 1,745,725 |
| Heredia | 2,949,692 | 132,842 | .. | .. |
| Guanacaste | 1,862,598 | 92,321 | 121,342 | .. |
| Puntarenas | 392,721 | 21,325 | 132,845 | .. |
| Limon | 18,525 | 2,822 | .. | .. |
| Total | 28,391,254 | 4,816,117 | 1,358,258 | 1,753,640 |