A cattle rancher in El Rama, a small town in the South...

NICARAGUA, EL RAMA, SOUTH CARIBBEAN COAST - 2017/02/24: A cattle rancher in El Rama, a small town in the South Caribbean Coast Autonomous region of Nicaragua. Cattle breeding in Nicaragua has been a fundamental in the economy of the country in the past 150 years. Of the five million acres of farmland in Nicaragua almost the 80% is pastureland. Deforestation in this region has been extreme in the past 30 years and combine to agriculture and cattle raising accelerated soil erosion consequently increasing sediments carried by the streams and degenerating the water quality. Although Nicaragua struggled to recover from the devastation caused by the civil war of the 1980s, in the past decade the durability of the country's democracy has helped its little economy to grow significantly. Being the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere after Haiti, Nicaragua is considered one of the safest and fastest-growing countries of all Latin America, thanks to a boom in the tourism industry as well as a significant increase in traditional production, e.g. coffee, meat and sugar, and in seafood exports. (Photo by Emanuele Giovagnoli/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)