The average Canadian consumes 30 lb. of bananas per year. As we tear off the peel and take a big bite, or slice one into our cereal or mash one up for baby food, we don’t normally think of the cost to Latin American (and, to a lesser extent, Caribbean and African) workers and their natural environment.
The term “banana republic” was coined to describe countries like Costa Rica and Guatemala, which have been historically dependent economically on banana exports and run by brutal dictators kept in power by fruit export companies. This tells us that, again, our enjoyment of the “fruits” of life have come on the backs of the poor in the Southern Hemisphere.
The banana is the most important export fruit on the planet, a market worth $5 US billion per year. Annually, fourteen million tons of bananas are produced and exported by giant corporations such as Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte who control 70% of the global market. As coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar prices have fallen on the international market in recent years, companies have turned to increased fruit and cut flower production. In either case, what was promoted as “economic development” for the Third World has become just another example of labour and environmental exploitation for corporate profit.
Peasants who previously grew staples and fruit on small holdings have lost their land, through sale or more likely violent takeover, to company-supported plantation operations. As landless peasants, they have been forced to work for very low wages, to leave their homes and work as migrant labourers on plantations in other Central American countries, or to move into the squalid slum conditions of growing urban centres.
The environmental problems begin when land is cleared to grow bananas, putting a monoculture crop that may not be indigenous to a region, in place of rainforest or local agriculture. Thus, local workers lose the land on which they grow their family’s food. For example, Costa Rica and Guatemala have reduced their cereal production by up to one-half over the past twenty-five years, increasing both local hunger and the need to import staples. The deforestation in Latin America is a prime cause of climate change around the world and the associated loss of biodiversity, when massive acreages are wiped out, endangers many species of flora and fauna.
Soils that are not properly prepared to handle commercial agriculture are dependent on heavy applications of synthetic fertilizers as well as pesticides. As insects develop a resistance to pesticides and begin to multiply again, more and stronger chemicals are used, damaging the environment, the health of local inhabitants and workers, and ultimately consumers in North America and Europe.
It is estimated that 25% of pesticides wind up traveling through the air and local waterways, causing eczema, asthma, poisonings and cancers in humans and massive kills of fish, insects and small animals. The United Nations’ World Health Organization has declared these pesticides, Paraquat, terbufos and carbofuran, to be extremely hazardous and many Western countries have banned their use. Yet, we ship them to the South where they are used in fruit production for our markets.
Materials used in the banana plantations, such as chemical containers, plastic bags to protect the plants, and the stalks from the banana plants end up as piles of toxic garbage. Little safety training is done with plantation workers, thus increasing the hazard to human and ecological health.
Canadians have, in the past, demanded that their fruit and vegetables look immaculate. Only heavily chemicalized produce can look that good! Today, a growing number of consumers are looking for organic produce and are more aware of environmental and labour issues. Thus, the large corporations are trying to improve their images. One example is Del Monte which had been cited for poor working conditions and many environmental “accidents” in Costa Rica in the late Nineties. Del Monte Executives now say that “environmental stewardship is extremely important to us”.
Chiquita, meanwhile, has initiated a program with the Rainforest Alliance, called the Better Banana Project. This is an environmental and social certification project on which company officials say they have spent $20 million on to meet stringent standards. Dole is keeping up with the pack by recently announcing that it will sell organic bananas into that growing market.
At the same time, however, these three companies have a long history of under-paying workers, union-busting, influence peddling, and environmental destruction. Becoming good corporate citizens may be just a marketing strategy in a very competitive environment, rather than a real change of heart. A big issue facing the companies at the moment is trade arrangements with the European Union on tariffs, and this has led to international law suits and put at least Chiquita on shaky financial ground.
Small fair trade enterprises in large cities in North America and Europe are now exporting bananas and other produce from smallholders in developing countries. While this business is dwarfed by the global market, it does offer the consumer an option of supporting organic, co-operative efforts at sustainable development. In many European countries now, fair trade bananas hold a 10% share of the market and in the U.S., the organic market in produce is growing by 25% per year. This increasing demand will help to bring about better conditions for workers and the environment around the world.
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