SANTO DOMINGO.- The country shores its footers as a power in organic and nontraditional farm crops, with exports of more thanUS$300 million per year and more than 30,000 direct and indirect jobs.

Among the products are bananas, coffee, cacao, mangoes, Chinese and greenhouses vegetables, lemons, oranges and sapodilla, according to Agriculture Ministry and Dominican Republic Export and Investment Center figures. They note that organic exports, which earned US$175 million in 2008, will surpass US$200 million this year.

Almost 20,000 hectares are set aside for organic and nontraditional products, distributed among 13,660 farmers.

For August, 2004 the country had 250,000 square meters of greenhouses with US$4 million in earnings, and rose to US$44 million in 2008, with the area increased to 2.3 million meters square.

This year greenhouse exports are expected to surpass US$32 million and more than 43.3 million pounds of vegetables under controlled environment were produced in 2008.

The country’s agro-organics development continues its accelerated growth, as evidenced by the numerous new projects, while the Agriculture Ministry registered the installation of 276,500 square meters of greenhouses this year.

Greenhouse production in the first half included 13.5 million pounds of red peppers, cucumber (6.5 million) and green pepper (2.5 million), whereas tomatoes posted a sizable jump, from 8.5 million pounds in 2008 to 5.5 million in just the first half of 2009.

Red pepper rose even sharper, as the 950,000 pounds produced in the first half was 120,000 pounds more than 2008’s total  production, for which Agriculture expects a 26% jump.