Banana

:For other meanings, see banana (disambiguation)

Banana trade

Bananas are among the most widely consumed foods in the world, and the only fruit to appear in the top ten biggest food crops. However, many banana farmers receive a low price for their produce. Large chain store retailers leverage their size to negotiate lower year round contract prices for bananas. Marketers of bananas thus have reduced their margins which in turn has led to more pressure to lower prices to growers. Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte grow their own bananas in Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras. Banana plantations are capital intensive and demand high expertise so the majority of independent growers are large and wealthy landowners of these countries. This has led to bananas being available as a 'fair trade' item in some countries. The banana has an extensive trade history beginning with the founding of the United Fruit Company at the end of the nineteenth century. For much of the 20th century, bananas and coffee dominated the export economies of Central America. In the 1930s, bananas and coffee made up as much as 75 percent of the region's exports. As late as 1960, the two crops accounted for 67 percent of the exports from the region. Though the two were grown in similar regions, they tended not to be distributed together. The United Fruit Company based its business almost entirely on the banana trade, as the coffee trade proved too difficult for them to control. The term "banana republic" has been broadly applied to the countries in the region, but from a strict economic perspective only Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama were actual "banana republics" – countries with economies dominated by the banana trade.

Related Topics:
Fair trade - United Fruit Company - 20th century - Coffee - 1930s - 1960 - Banana republic

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(Source of statistics: Skidmore, T., Smith, P., (2001) Modern Latin America (5th edition). New York: Oxford University Press)

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