Editing Economy of Nicaragua (section)

===Agriculture and food production===
{| style="width: 26em; font-size: 85%; text-align: left;" class="infobox"
|- 
!align="center" bgcolor="lightblue" colspan="3"|Food and agriculture
|-
! style="background:#e9e9e9;" | '''Product'''
! style="background:#e9e9e9;" | World rank<sup>1</sup>
|-
| style="background:#f0f0f0;" |Coffee, green
| style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right| 4
|-
|Beans, Dry
|align=right|17
|-
|Groundnuts in Shell
|align=right|30
|-
| style="background:#f0f0f0;" |Indigenous cattle meat
| style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right|30
|-
|Plantains
| align=right|32
|-
|style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Sesame Seed
|style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right|32
|-
|Sugar Cane
| align=right|32
|-
|style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Pineapples
|style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right|33
|-
|Castor Beans
| align=right|37
|-
|style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Cocoa beans
|style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right|41
|-
|Cassava
| align=right|48
|-
|style="background:#f0f0f0;"|Oranges
|style="background:#f0f0f0;" align=right|49
|-
|Soybeans
| align=right|50
|-
|colspan=3 style="background:#e9e9e9;" align=center|<small><sup>1</sup>Source: [[FAO]] (2005) Major Food and Agricultural Commodities and Producers<ref>http://www.fao.org/es/ess/top/topproduction.html?lang=en&country=157&year=2005</ref></small>
|-
|}

{{Main|Agriculture in Nicaragua}}
[[Coffee]] became Nicaragua's principal crop in the 1870s, a position it still held in 1992 despite the growing importance of other crops. [[Cotton]] gained importance in the late 1940s, and in 1992 was the second biggest export earner. In the early 20th century, Nicaraguan governments were reluctant to give concessions to the large United States banana companies, and [[banana]]s never attained the level of prominence in Nicaragua that they reached in Nicaragua's Central American neighbors; bananas were grown in the country, however, and were generally the third largest export earner in the post-World War II period. [[Beef]] and animal byproducts, the most important agricultural export for the three centuries before the coffee boom of the late 19th century, were still important commodities in 1992.

From the end of World War II to the early 1960s, the growth and [[Agricultural diversification|diversification]] of the [[agricultural sector]] drove the nation's [[economic expansion]]. From the early 1960s until the increased fighting in 1977 caused by the [[FSLN|Sandinista revolution]], agriculture remained a robust and significant part of the [[economy]], although its growth slowed somewhat in comparison with the previous postwar decades. Statistics for the next fifteen years, however, show stagnation and then a drop in agricultural production.

The agricultural sector declined precipitously in the 1980s. Until the late 1970s, Nicaragua's agricultural export system generated 40 percent of the country's GDP, 60 percent of national employment, and 80 percent of foreign exchange earnings. Throughout the 1980s, the Contras destroyed or disrupted coffee harvests as well as other key income-generating crops. Private industry stopped investing in agriculture because of uncertain returns. Land was taken out of production of export crops to expand plantings of basic grain. Many coffee plants succumbed to disease.

In 1989, the fifth successive year of decline, farm production declined by roughly 7 percent in comparison with the previous year. Production of basic grains fell as a result of [[Hurricane Joan]] in 1988 and a drought in 1989. By 1990 agricultural exports had declined to less than half the level of 1978. The only bright spot was the production of nontraditional export crops such as [[sesame]], [[tobacco]], and African palm oil.