Bananas are globally one of the most commonly eaten fruit, not just in the tropics where they are usually grown, but in regions like North America and Europe. However, the way bananas are produced and exported gives an insight into a number of global issues.

As writer and journalist Peter Chapman reminds us in his book about on the history of the banana industry and United Fruit Company in particular, while bananas feature in many jokes, no one laughs at the banana in its areas of origin. It is too serious a business, on which jobs and lives depend. ( Jungle Capitalists , Canongate Books, 2007)

Bananas grow on large plants not trees. (Source: Wikipedia)

In a number of countries such as Brazil and India, large amounts of bananas are produced but consumed mostly locally. Other regions such as Central America and the Caribbean include a large number of banana exporters. Some of the nations in these regions are quite dependent on banana exports, often to their former colonial rulers.

Chapman details in his above-mentioned book, how for decades one multinational, United Fruit Company (now declined and surviving in small part as Chiquita), was often accused of bribing Latin American government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting workers, creating an abusive monopoly, and—similar to accusations some oil companies have have faced—encouraged or supported US coups against smaller nations putting in place dicatorships. The story of it’s rise and demise, which Chapman details, almost created the banana industry and what became termed the banana republics of Central America.

As Rebecca Cohen in her above-mentioned article summarized, the United Fruit Company thrived on the lack of unity, poverty, and corrupt governments in Central America. Businesses were able to get favorable terms, the best land, and vertical integration of the whole production and supply processes making them large, powerful and enormously influential entities.

Even during times tough times for United Fruit Company, (such as when they favored Hitler’s rapidly industrializing Germany over the US just as the Second World War was going to break out), they managed to get by and resorted to information/perception management (i.e. propaganda) and philanthropy to foster a more positive image of itself. (Chapman, pp. 111–119)

Dole and Chiquita are, in effect, inheritors of the empires that their predecessors created (Dole was formerly the Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit Company mostly survives as Chiquita though none have such overt geopolitical practices that their earlier companies were accused of).

Image: Women in Belize sorting bananas and slicing them from bunches. (Source: Wikipedia)

Just 5 companies—Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, Fyffes and Noboa—control some 80% of the international banana trade, according to Banana Link, a UK-based organization campaigning for fairer and sustainable banana trade.

Cohen, mentioned above, summarizes how workers are exploited by a race to the bottom where supermarkets demand lowest prices for consumers, which results in low wages for workers in plantations.

Some workers work very long hours, sometimes exposed to hazardous chemicals, some which are often banned from nations with better ability to provide for worker safety, such as in the US and Europe.

Child labor, gender discrimination and other problems accompany this drive for low consumer prices.

Banana Link notes that in the past decade supermarkets have become a more significant part of the issue, helping drive wages down. Bananas in particular are becoming more important:

Supermarkets are now the only players in the banana chain to consistently make profits from bananas, having dramatically increased their economic power in the banana chain in the last decade. Bananas are the single most profitable item passing through the check-outs in British supermarkets, accounting for 1% of all sales. In the USA, it is estimated that bananas represent 2% of the total turnover of North American grocery retailers. Supermarkets, Banana Link, undated, last accessed June 14, 2009

Nations like the UK have a large concentration of supermarkets controlling most of the sector, leading to the usual economic and social problems that concentration brings.

Banana Link also notes that supermarkets are not neutral actors; they are in large part responsible for their aggressive price cutting (by often making suppliers reduce their prices rather than reducing their own margins, though sometimes their own margins are already low).