Bananas
The banana market is controlled by five large corporations - Chiquita (25%), Dole (25%), Del Monte (15%), Noboa (9%) and Fyffes (7%). Most bananas are grown on huge plantations, controlled by these corporate giants. The remaining banana production for export comes from small banana producers - family owned farms in places like the Windward Islands.
When you shop at the supermarket, how often do you think about where the food you eat comes from or how it is grown? Supermarkets today contain food from all over the world. But how does it get to our table?
Take the banana industry as an example. Very few bananas are grown in North America, yet North Americans are major consumers of bananas. In fact, bananas are amongst the top five most important food commodities in world trade.
Want to learn more?[Banana Facts] [Environmental Costs] [Social Costs] [Fair Trade Bananas]
Banana Facts
Bananas are grown in many parts of the world, but the majority of the bananas for export - 83% - is grow in Latin America. Latin American bananas is commonly referred to as the 'dollar bananas', due to their cheap price relative to other banana producing nations such as Costa Rica and the Windward Islands.
The banana market is controlled by five large corporations - Chiquita (25%), Dole (25%), Del Monte (15%), Noboa (9%) and Fyffes (7%). Most bananas are grown on huge plantations, controlled by these corporate giants. The remaining banana production for export comes from small banana producers - family owned farms in places like the Windward Islands.
The competition between these banana corporations is fierce. These companies are extremely powerful both in exporting countries, and in their country of origin. Today, they set producer countries competing with each other, forcing governments to accept impositions with regards to taxes, tariff preferences, preferential access to loans, and deregulation of social and environmental policies.
These companies are integrated vertically up the chain. This means that they own or contract plantations, own sea transport and ripening facilities, and have their own distribution networks in consuming countries. It enables them considerable economies of scale, and they can sell 'dollar' bananas on the Northern markets at very low prices.
For example, the current legal minimum price paid to a producer for a box of bananas in Ecuador is $2.90. That same box can then sell in a British supermarket for about $25.00, with the supermarket taking more than a 40% share of the final price. Banana producers are constantly pressured to produce at even lower prices, pushing down wage levels and working conditions in plantations in an attempt to remain 'competitive'. Ecuador, the world's biggest banana exporting company, is leading the race to the bottom in the banana industry.
These corporations expatriate most of the profits from the producer countries:
- Only 12% of the revenues remain in the producer country.
- Plantation workers get only 7-10% of the revenues
- Small farmers get only 1-2% of the revenues.
Environmental Costs
- Continuing yield increase is the result of increasing amount of chemical inputs. An average of 280 different pesticides are currently authorized in banana cultivation. This situation cannot change as the demand for immaculate bananas rest the norm on the world market.
- Environmental devastation caused by the use of toxic chemicals and intensive farming methods. Currently industrial plantations use 44/kg/ha/year of pesticides, of which, 90% is lost through wind drift, is absorbed by the soil and washed off by rain into rivers and creeks - a source of drinking water for the local citizens.
- Banana monoculture and genetic uniformity have intensified the outbreaks of increasingly resistant pests and diseases. Thousand of plantations from Central to Latin America grow the same variety of banana, the Dwarf Cavendish. This results in soil erosion, water pollution, deforestation, and land contamination.
Social Costs
- Low wages for workers, job insecurity, excessively long work hours, denial of the right for freedom of association and collective bargaining.
- Health issues are not recognized. There are no standards in place that enforce the wearing of protective clothing by workers exposed to harmful chemicals.
- The increased frequency of pesticide poisoning has lead to the outbreak of infertility and cancer among banana workers and their families at a rate higher than that found in the general population.
- Forest colonization: due to corporate strategy of monoculture farming which leads to rapid soil depletion and drives indigenous populations out of their ancestral lands to make room for the expansion of plantations.
Fair Trade Bananas
Given the bleak situation with the mainstream banana industry, Fair Trade in bananas has been growing by leaps and bounds:
Fair Trade bananas were first introduced into the Netherlands under the "Max Havelaar" label in 1996 when 2,500 tonnes of fair trade bananas were sold in the first year. The total worldwide banana sales in 1996 were 10 million tonnes. In 2005 this number has grown to 103,144 tonnes. The total worldwide banana sales in 2005 were 12.8 million tonnes. One in every four bananas sold in Switzerland is fair trade!
Transfair USA has certified fair trade bananas in the United States since January 2004. Initially they will be available nationwide through Wild Oats Markets (www.wildoats.com). Transfair Canada certified bananas in 2004. SPUD.ca (www.spud.ca), a Vancouver based organic home delivery company has been importing fairtrade bananas for sale in the Vancouver area. See the press release published in the Vancouver Sun (SPUD.ca Brings First Fair Trade Bananas to Canada). A banana fact sheet provides information on fair trade bananas.
Banana Fact Sheet [PDF file]
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