Quotes from “Banana, the Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World” by Dan Koeppel

I’m not sure that I would accept this title in its entirety, however, it is a fruit that changed much for Central America.  I am sad to think that I am part of a North American culture whose major religion allowed us to abuse other nations, whose constitution did not seem to apply to other nations, and whose economy allowed separation of a person’s wealth from the consequences of where the money was used. I puzzle over Jesus’ simple summary of the commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.” Matthew 22: 37-39. NIV. I puzzle because the second part of Jesus’s summary of God’s law didn’t always seem to apply to our neighbours in Central America.

“it seems to me that if we allow others to suffer the problems that arise from growing and depending on bananas, and we refuse to shoulder even a portion of that load, then we’re doing nothing but continuing a century of disregard and exploitation….”  p 241

“the only genuine way to make fair trade succeed is not to attempt to transform Chiquita or Dole or Ecuador or Honduras or even individual plantations themselves. The shift needs to begin not where the bananas are produced, but where they are bought. Consumers need to insist on fair trade, and governments need to mandate it. Only then will banana growers attempt the changes in infrastructure needed to make fair trade or organics, or both, a possibility. Such a thing has happened in some parts of the world: almost half the bananas bought in Switzerland are fair-trade products. Worldwide, the amount of organic and fair-trade fruit produced has more than doubled in the last five years. Though the target remains statistically distant, the process is the best hope for th bringing a measure of justice to workers who, for over a century, have known very little.” p 235

“the next few years saw mixed results – and Black under increasing pressure. United Brands earned praise for its efforts in helping Nicaragua recover from a devastating 1972 earthquake; company money was largely responsible for rebuilding the country’s capital, Managua. The same year, the spread of Sigatoka increased across the region. The companyis response was to use more, and increasingly toxic chemical sprays. The health of the banana workers declined again.” p 171

The Use of Pesticides

The Panama disease, a soil borne disease that devastated banana plantations was already present around the turn of the century.

“the banana moguls knew what Panama disease was. They knew what it did. They knew how it spread. But they refused to use any of this knowledge for positive change. It was as if the power of the banana, which had changed both the nations that consumed it and those that grew it, had addicted United Fruit and its rivals to just one method of growth; blunt marauding through the tropics without considering the consequences of, or alternatives to, standard procedure. Now that nature had answered back, the banana companies seemed deaf and baffled.” p 102

“the substance known as the Bordeaux mixture led to a chemical retaking of the tropics. “to deliver the necessary enormous quantities – 250 gallons per acre, twenty to thirty times per year – United Fruit created a fungicide infrastructure of phaeronic scale, ” wrote Steve Marquardt in 2002…Pesticides have been used for thousands of centuries, but United Fruit’s industrialization of the process was the final part of an infamous trio of “innovations” that, in less than two decades, transformed the way people controlled – and reacted to – agricultural maladies. Aerial spraying was invented in 1922. It was followed, ten years later, by the first crop experiments of DDT.” p 107.

“Already burdened by near-indentured status, with substandard housing, poor medical care, and no ability to organize, they now faced a much more insidious threat: Bordeaux mixture made them sick. Workers would return from the field with their skin literally turned blue by the heavy spraying. No longer was the biggest immediate health risk faced by banana workers an industrial accident – wound from a machete or a mishap on a loading dock. After a few months of exposure, workers could no longer scrub the blue tint from their flesh. They’d lose their sense of smell and their ability to hold down food. Then they died.”  p 108

“In 1972,..the same year, the spread of Sigatoka increased across the region (Nicaragua). The company’s (United Fruit) was to use more, and increasingly toxic chemical sprays. The health of the banana workers declined again.”  p 172

“more chemicals are being used to fight Sigatoka (a fungus), and more workers are getting sick. Over the past several years, five lawsuits were filed against Dole on behalf of banana workers in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama. The suits alleged that the former Standard Fruit had, since the 1970s, knowingly used a pesticide called DBCP – mostly to fight Black Sigatoka – that made worker sterile (chemical banned in the US).”

“Just three years ago, a Chiquita spokesperson scoffed when asked whether the company was trying to build a better banana….”we prefer to focus our research on traditional means of control”.  Pesticides over patrimony.” p 239.

Two Suicides

There were two key persons in the banana industry who took their own lives, both who had worked for United Fruit. Both deeply religious persons. Both were affected by the shareholder’s needs to maximize profits. Shareholders were able to separate their own moral obligations to their neighbour from their personal faith convictions. That is how investment has appeared to work in North America.

Dr. Philip Rowe: “Rowe didn’t invent the painstaking techniques that allowed banana scientists to breed the unbreedable, but he sharpened them, perfected them, and even succeeded with them, through a combination of genius and determination. Rowe arrived in Honduras in 1959, immediately after graduating from college. Since 1958 Phil Rowe had slowly, painstakingly been concocting better bananas….but despite these successes, the 1970s were a time of decline for banana breeders. Eli Black’s cost cutting measures eliminated much of the funding for the La Lima laboratories. Company managers had concluded that there was little need for a better commercial banana after all: Panama disease appeared to be gone, and Sigatoka was controllable with chemicals…It took a quarter century for Phil Rowe to come up with his dream banana. The company that he began with changed its name, lost money, lost its leadership position in the market, and lost Eli Black. Black Sigatoka had begun to decimate plantations across the region and had spread to Africa and Asia. The La Lima research facility was abandoned and reborn as FHIA. Through all those years, just twenty banana varieties out of the twenty thousand tested by the facility showed any of the desired traits….Then came the fruit good enough to be designated FHIA-01. Phil Rowe’s masterpiece does things no other banana can: It never turns brown. The fruit remains firm and solid for far longer than the Cavendish does.Goldfinger is virtually immune (to the Black Sigatoka and the Panama disease)…Goldfinger can be grown across a wider spectrum of terrain and weather conditions than the Cavendish, making it- in sufficient volume – cheaper to produce. Because it resists so many pests, it can be grown organically on land that has already been cleared. How does Goldfinger taste? Some refer to the fruit as the apple banana. The more proper term, when experts characterize the fruit’s taste, is an “acid banana”..Rowe’s greatest banana tastes so different from what we’re now accustomed to that the transition would be much more jarring to the consumer than the Gros Michel changeover…Rowe was an enigmatic genius; he was an accomplished scientist; he was an evangelical Christian. His understanding of how important bananas were made him a beloved character in impoverished Honduras. On many mornings, a half dozen or more locals would queue up at the La Lima research station. Rowe would give them fruit, or jobs, and sometimes even pay for their schooling. It was as if he was trying, all on his own, to right the wrongs of United Fruit – both social and biological. It would be hard to say whether or not Rowe succeeded. His banana varieties are now growing across the world and have been as productive as subsistence bananas. Rowe was reserved and revealed little of his own deepest thoughts, other than to express unbridled optimism, so it is hard to say how much of a toll this took on him or whether he felt that the mission he’d set for himself was too large, too frustrating, too impossible. On Sunday, March 25, 2001, near the La Lima research facilit, Phil Rowe committed suicide. A note he left to his wife and two children said, “Please forgive me”. Rowe’s impact was not just on banana science – he’d also, in a way, helped rehabilitate the reputation of the United States in Honduras. It wasn’t possible for Rowe to erase nearly a hundred years of history, but he accomplished as much as any one person could: “We have lost the best American who ever came to Honduras,” wrote Billy Pena, a columnist for the Tiempo newspaper.”

Eli Black: “Black’s next target was United Fruit. The late 1960s ere a time when many small US companies merged into huge conglomerates….Black won the battle for the banana giant with spectacular fireworks: On September 25, 1969, he bought 733,000 shares of United Fruit in a single day – at the time, the third largest deal in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Black was known as a take no prisoners businessman… Black also hated defeat. Yet the sixteen hour days he’d been putting in at United Brand’s New York headquarters had failed to yield success; instead, they created grumblings on the part of company executives, shareholders, and banks that Black was better as a dealmaker than a day to day manager. …The police quickly ruled Black’s death a suicide. The only investigation remaining to be made was by the Securities and Exchange Commission, a routine inquiry always performed after such events. Black was working hard to squeeze every dollar out of United Brands. What he’d done was absolutely consistent with the company’s history – in fact, it seemed comparatively minor – but it was absolutely contradictory to Black’s values: in order to reduce the company’s tax liabilities in Honduras, Black had personally authorized a $ 1.25 million bribe to Oswaldo Lopez Arellano. The bribe had the intended effect – the tax on bananas was reduced to a quarter per box….The answer to Black’s suicide may lie in the friction between two poles: the checkered history of United Fruit, and the ethos most important in Black’s life – not business – but faith, as exemplified by the Torah, the holiest Hebrew text, and one that Black, as a rabbi and a scholar, had studied his entire life.”

It appears that Dr. Rowe understood Jesus’ summary of the law – love your neighbour. He found himself very alone trying to do this. It makes me think about our own money, our investments, and that we have a moral obligation for how our money is used. If we don’t invest in companies ourselves, but rather just keep our money in the bank, we have to understand that our banks invest our money for us in various companies. Do we really know what our money is being used for? Do we understand how our neighbours are affected by our money?

This book is humbling in so many ways. In the next post, I will include some more quotations from this book – from a more political perspective.