The banana is one of the oldest and most loved cultivated plants of humankind. Along the vast deforested jungle surfaces in the producing regions, nothing other than banana plants can be seen right up to the horizon. More than 85 countries have a holding in the production of the yellow fruit. Several millions of people are trying to live off the trade on a daily basis. Even if the banana business is worth it for some, in the southern areas of production it does not support an income for the hundreds and thousands of victims of the circumstances at hand.

Right from the start over 100 years ago, two thirds of the world wide banana trade have been under the control of > a few international consolidated companies ever since that time. These giants of the fruit trade have such a detrimental influence on the fortune and fate of the countries of origin. They determine the working conditions, the prices and even the politics in the so called “Banana Republic”. But thus the influencing control is not yet terminated: The company Chiquita admitted recently also the > support of rightist guerillas in Colombia.

Today bananas are cheaper than ever before. Over the last 10 years, the world market price has been sinking steadily every year. The reason, quite beside the world wide over production, is the exceeding intercessional power of the big supermarket chains. The leverage of the above mentioned conglomerates is confined largely to the relationship with the actual banana growers, at the point where they undercut each other regarding production costs, ecological standards and the civil rights of their employees.

About 40% of the world wide export arrives in the EU. The big importers can thereby haul in some additional profit given that the price level in Europe is roughly 38% more than what the rest of the world market takes. But what do the actual workers get out of all of this?

Working on a banana plantation is a tough job and the payment dreadful. More often than not, owners of the plantations force their workers to work under the minimum wage. Labourers in a banana plantation usually have a limited contract or work on the basis of a daily wage.

fff

For example in Ecuador...

In Ecuador, where plus minus 350.000 workers are engaged on plantations, the worker participation law of a union is frequently evaded: Many plantations hence employ subcontractors that on their part employ less than 30 workers, who have no rights, no social insurance and whose families are sinking into poverty.

fff

For plantation workers and their families there are however furthermore disadvantages, in particular the sanitary catastrophes that have become a day to day routine. On large scale plantations pesticides are sprayed over the monocultures by airplane, or manually direct onto the plants from the ground. The airplanes spurt their load of pesticides over the plantations even when the workforce is busy between the plants. Some part of the poisonous spout is, among other things, blown onto the houses of the labourers and their families, which also drips into the drinking water. Sterility, cancer and birth deformities have become a widespread phenomenon in the families of plantation workers.

fff

Pesticides for production...

Every year millions of people are being poisoned by pesticides as a result of scanty working conditions. The World Health Organisation estimates that year for year over two million of these people do not survive the poison , and the number of victims are drastically increasing. Furthermore, that the estimated number of unreported cases is as high as it is, one can assume that the number of victims of poisoning and casualties thereof is decidedly larger than studies have declared.

What can I do?

Fairly traded bananas warrants a humane standard of living for farmers and their families and undermines the exploiters of the above described situation! Fair traded bananas you can find in your supermarket or > here!

> Support Sukuma!

> forward to "Step 2"!

Sources