Thanks for writing about this, Ryan. I've been following this story and really disappointed by how little press it's gotten.

I stopped buying Chiquita bananas as of several weeks ago when I learned about this, which I must say, has meant that, I haven't eaten so many bananas. Alternative brands are HARD to find!

Posted by: Patty | November 2, 2007 4:17 PM

No wonder Chiquita banannas were really marked down at the local supermarket earlier this week!!

Posted by: eleanor | November 2, 2007 4:56 PM

My good friend John, recently retired from Chiquita and Columbia was his territory. He would fly in several times a year, and he said he was shot at many times landing and taking off. Violence is a fact there, and he had no solution to fix the problem other than abandoning Columbia. What's that do for the banana growers?

Posted by: Cads | November 3, 2007 2:41 AM

Anyone in remotely warm climates (i.e. anywhere but Minnesota) can grow bananas on their own. The trees take about two years to develop, but produce boku bananas once they do.

Posted by: kevin s. | November 3, 2007 5:30 PM

So Chiquita paid off Columbian paramilitaries to make business run smoother.
And Dell paid off NC legislators to make its business run smoother.
Then the anti-tobbacco lobbies paid off legislators to get their agenda passed.
And Sojourners lobbies Congress to send money collected in taxes to foreign aid recipients.

All politics is evil.

Chiquita paid off these paramilitaries which in turn provided a lot of bananas at lower cost to a lot of people. It also insured employment for the banana farmers, and pickers. It insured that the banana trees would not be burnt down, in a net loss to humanity. Are they absolved? No. But it is necessary that we keep things in perspective.

Chiquita's goal was by no means to aid or abet any military or government, but to satisfy its customers and make life better for everyone. Every businessman faces the same moral dilemma nearly anywhere he chooses to do business. Paying off those who hold political power is the most wasteful and potentially morally evil action that these businessmen have to do. But without it they would not be able to do anything.

Nathanael Snow
ndsnow@gmail.com

Posted by: jurisnaturalist | November 4, 2007 2:34 PM

I'm confused - why is eating a Chiquita banana okay as long as you didn't pay for it with your own money? It's okay to eat if someone else's money paid for it?

That seem pretty hypocritical to me - enjoy a nice banana on someone else's blood money.

Posted by: Anonymous | November 5, 2007 1:17 PM

John,
Thanks for the dialog.
1. Subsidies. You are absolutely right. Subsidies are evil. All of them. Subsidies to corporations, farms, and individuals are all based on some arbitrary determination of what is rich and what is poor. They disrupt the price system and cause some resources to be overvalued while others are undervalued.

2. You say that Australia has increased yields 250% over 30 years. Well done! You go on to say that Ausies have "needed to to cope with decreasing term of trade." There are so many variables involved in the terms of trade that it is hard to discern whether a -1% is on face value good or bad. It seems to say that Australia now produces 250% of what they did 30 years ago, but the rest of the world now produces 250% plus 1% per year, over 30 years compounded = -35%, call it 337% of what they used to. So you are richer, but not as much richer. Not worth complaining about. If it no longer works, quit and do something else.

which leads us to
3. "Get big or get out" You've lost 50% of your farms. Have you lost 50% of your farm land? Why did those farms go under? Because there are increasing returns to scale. Big farms are more efficient and can produce more food than small farms. So fewer people should be farming. That leaves them free to go do something else. Pessimists call this unemployed. I call it "time to create a job for yourself." It is creative destruction, and progress requires it.
You say the infrastructure has suffered, I say it has changed. If it is worse, then leave. Go somewhere else and do something else. No one has a right to an unchanging or improving way of life.

4. You complain that markets are set by the strong. Can you imagine what this world would be like if they were set by the weak? Or the mediocre? You want to sell your wheat. Let's say you have to sell it to the LOWEST bidder. How would THAT work?!?

5. Supermarkets. I'd guess that your numbers have changed quite a bit over 10 years. Efficiencies in shipping and preserving have made fresh produce much more affordable than in the past. Maybe this is US specific, but I doubt it.

Posted by: jurisnaturalist | November 6, 2007 5:54 PM

Some final comments

Re crop increase, sorry I left out one word, 'achievable yields by…'. Our production systems have allowed us to consistently approach the maximum wheat yields possible with the rain that falls in any season. This resulted in the yield increases over the long period which we need / needed to keep farming. Most 1st world systems have done this. We do not have any significant support from governments here.

Estimating costs and returns over years, one deflates the returns and costs to a common base. Then one can plot the changes over time. Look at the price of fuel now compared with 20 years ago how do you make a meaningful comparison.

Another way to look at it is how many kg of wheat does it take to pay for a Big Mac. The amounts have been increasing until the recent biofuel boom.

Again, I return to the point that often the producers do not get a significant increase in returns for their products even though the retail prices continue to rise in real terms.

Re markets, your anti trust laws / actions / break-ups of monopolies of the early 1900's were in part to give some justice/ equality in the market place.

Posted by: John Holmes | November 7, 2007 7:57 AM

"Global hunger could be directly attributed to meat-eating."

---Chrissie Hynde; Vegetarian Times interview

In his Pulitzer Prize nominated Diet for a New America, John Robbins writes:

"Half the world's population does not receive an adequate amount of food to eat. Ten to twenty million die annually of hunger and its effects. The Institute for Food and Development Policy reports that, 'Forty thousand children starve to death on this planet every day,' or one child every two seconds.

"The livestock population of the United States today consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times the entire human population of the country. We feed these animals over 80% of the corn we grow, and over 95% of the oats. Less than half the harvested agricultural acreage in the United States is used to grow food for people. Most of it is used to grow livestock feed."

Ronald J. Sider of Evangelicals for Social Action, in his 1977 book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, pointed out that 220 million Americans were eating enough food (largely because of the high consumption of grain-fed livestock) to feed over one billion people in the poorer countries.

John Robbins writes:

"The world's cattle alone, not to mention pigs and chickens, consume a quantity of food equal to the caloric needs of 8.7 billion people--nearly double the entire human population of the planet. It takes 16 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. According to Department of Agriculture statistics, one acre of land can grow 20,000 pounds of potatoes. That same acre of land, if used to grow cattlefeed, can produce less than 165 pounds of beef."

In his book, The Hungry Planet, Georg Bergstrom points out that protein-starved underdeveloped nations export more protein to wealthy nations than they receive. He calls this "the protein swindle." Ninety percent of the world's fish meal catch, for example, is exported to rich countries. One-third of Africa's peanut crop winds up in the stomachs of European livestock. Half the world's cereal crop is fed to livestock and the United States annually imports one million tons of vegetable protein from Third World nations--just to feed its farm animals.

Bergstrom writes: "Sometimes one wonders how many Americans and Western Europeans have grasped the fact that quite a few of their beef steaks, quarts of milk, dozens of eggs, and hundreds of broilers are the result, not of their agriculture, but of the approximately two million metric tons of protein, mostly of high quality, which astute Western businessmen channel away from the needy and hungry."

Jeremy Rifkin, author of a dozen influential books and President of the Foundation on Economic Trends, writes in his 1992 bestseller Beyond Beef:

"Cattle and other livestock are devouring much of the grain produced on the planet. It need be emphasized that this is a new phenomenon, unlike anything ever experienced before.

"Contrary to popular belief, the poor are getting poorer each year...Increased poverty has meant increased malnutrition. On the African continent, nearly one in every four human beings is malnourished. In Latin America, nearly one out of every seven people goes to bed hungry each night. In Asia and the Pacific, 28 percent of the people border on starvation, experiencing the gnawing pain of a perpetual hunger."

"In the Near East, one in ten people is underfed. Chronic hunger now affects upwards of 1.3 billion people, according to the world Health Organization--a statistic all the more striking in a world where one third of all the grain produced is being fed to cattle and other livestock. Never before in human history has such a large percentage of our species--nearly 25 percent--been malnourished.

"The transition of world agriculture from food grain to feed grains represents an...evil whose consequences may be far greater and longer lasting than any past examples of violence inflicted by men against their fellow human beings."

Posted by: Vasu Murti | November 9, 2007 9:56 PM