Although this blog post has been on my mind for months, I
did not write it in fear of doing the topic an injustice. How can words on a
page possibly bring you to the root of the banana industry where women, men,
and children engage in risky and consistently hard labour to bring the perfect
unblemished banana to our tables? The longer I sit on this story, the more
important I realize it is. So here is my story, based on eight months working with
bananas.
When we want a banana the furthest most of us have to travel
is to the grocery store. But, this convenience is not without costs. Save for a
small label that identifies the country of origin, we have no idea about the farms
our bananas come from. We also have no idea what farmers have sacrificed to
produce a bushel of bananas. Buying organic satisfies many consumers and frees
them of any guilt about unsustainable eating. Until 2012, I was one of those
consumers who thought I was doing my best for farmers and the environment when
buying organic.
Last year I realized the real danger of this assumption. I
realized that the label organic tells us nothing about how banana companies
treat banana farmers. I realized that organic bananas are bought and marketed
mainly by Transnational Corporations and human rights aren’t necessarily one of
their priorities, getting you to buy their organic banana is.
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| Traveling into these Talamanca Mountains, I did not expect to find the heart of Costa Rica's banana industry |
In my experience I was farming organic bananas in a Southern
Caribbean region of Costa Rica called Talamanca. I was working with Bribri
Indigenous people who have lived in the country since time immemorial. In
addition to being an Indigenous Territory this is arguably the most biodiverse
region of Costa Rica and where you can find Costa Rica’s largest national park.
This region is also hard to access, requiring boat, bus, and foot travel to
arrive. Needless to say, when I moved to this remote and lush tropical forest,
I did not expect to see large-scale banana farming.
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| Soils in Talamanca that have been organic since time immemorial |
The first two questions I asked, when I unexpectedly found
myself amidst a lot of bananas were: 1) With all the agricultural land in Costa
Rica, why did organic banana companies choose to buy bananas from Talamanca?
And 2) How was it cost-effective to export bananas through unpredictable rivers
and hard to access roads?
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| On export day, twice a month, this rocky shore is buried under bananas to be transported to the capital city |
As I recalled my research on organic farming, it dawned upon
me. For organic bananas you need organic land, land that has not been exposed
to chemical pesticides for at least three years. Unbeknownst to many, organic
land is something that is hard to find in Costa Rica (because of widespread
pesticide use). So, the fastest and cheapest way for companies to find organic
land was likely to travel to Indigenous communities, deep into the forest where
chemicals have never been used.
You don’t see anything wrong with the picture yet? Let’s dig
a little deeper.
Do transnational banana companies pay Indigenous people fair
wages?
No. An average farmer receives from 20-160 USD a month, far
less than the Costa Rican minimum wage of 502 USD. A kg of bananas is bought
for less than one-cent USD and sold – at my store – for about 20 times more.
Do banana companies recognize and respect traditional
farming practices?
No. Although Bribri bananas are cropped alongside many other food and timber species, companies do not see this biocultural diversity as beneficial, they see it as getting in the way of profits. Consequently, company representatives have tried to coerce people to increase production (and decrease crop diversity) through training as well as with economic threats.
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| Fresh peach palm fruits, just one part of the rich crop diversity common on Bribri farms |
Do companies have any liability if people get hurt or harmed
on the job or do they compensate people if their bananas get lost during
unpredictable river transport?
No and No.
As you can imagine, corporations are different and may not
have the same modus operandi as the
one I experienced in Costa Rica. However, other people’s experiences suggest
that transnational corporations elsewhere are similarly concerned with profit increase and similarly disinterested in human rights. My experiences demonstrate
that buying organic is not enough to free us of our social and environmental
eating responsibilities.
After moving home from Talamanca, it is safe to say that I
do not necessarily support large banana companies that simply label their
products as organic . When I do buy bananas – and other exotic foods like
coffee or chocolate - I look for equal exchange or other fairly traded
products.
