Banana
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1975: Honduras cancels Chiquita’s lopsided concession to grow bananas in that country.
1978: United Fruit pleads guilty to bribery. The scandal that overthrew a government and drove Eli Black to take his own life is resolved for a fine of $14,000.
1980: Problems begin to emerge with the African banana harvest: Blights and pathogens that should be easily controllable with chemicals begin to show resistance. More and more spraying is needed, at greater and greater cost. Even with all this, production on the continent is cut by half as a result of these stronger diseases.
1981: Black Sigatoka, the leaf-rotting fungus, hits South America. Once again, the solution favored by banana growers is chemical spraying.
1983: Chiquita closes its research and development labs, ending an decades-long tradition of study and exploration.
1985: The Honduran government takes over La Lima and the “Zona Americana,” the abandoned Chiquita compound that served as the company’s Central American headquarters. The company swimming pool, movie theater, and horse-racing track are razed, and the facility is converted to the Honduran Agricultural Research Foundation. The primary constant? Phil Rowe, the world’s most prolific banana breeder, stays on. In Southern California, another breeder, Doug Richardson, opens Seaside Banana Gardens. The short-lived botanical park and greenhouse facility introduces, for the first time, exotic banana varieties to the U.S. Most Americans still don’t know that any banana other than the Cavendish exists.
1985–90: A new incarnation of Panama disease begins to appear in Asia. By 1990, it will destroy Cavendish crops in multiple countries. The question: How fast will it spread?
1993: Transcontinental banana wars begin as Europe and the United States battle over banana tariffs. Besides clothing, no single product has raised more contentious and nasty conflicts. U.S. banana companies pressure Congress to enact tariffs against Europe’s closed markets.
1998: Hurricane Mitch destroys 80 percent of the Honduran banana crop, causing an economic and humanitarian disaster in that country. It will take nearly a decade to rebuild the industry, and Honduras will never again lead the world in banana production.
1998: The world’s largest banana-processing plant, capable of handling fifty thousand bananas daily, is opened in Costa Rica.
1998: Reporters for the Cincinnati Enquirer publish the first of what was to be a series of articles detailing continued wrongdoing on the part of Chiquita. Chiquita’s private investigators discover that reporters were given access to company voice-mail messages. The company complains to the paper’s publishers about this possibly illegal invasion of privacy, and the rest of the series is abruptly pulled. The reporters are fired.
1998: The World Trade Organization rules that European banana growers competed unfairly against U.S. companies.
1999: U.S. banana consumption is one hundred fruits per person per year.
2000: A new series of tariff and free-trade fights begin over bananas. Activists, including the Rainforest Alliance, target the banana industry for pesticide use.
2001: The Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, opens the first genetics research facility for bananas. Head researcher Rony Swennen leads an effort to gather over 1,200 samples of different banana varieties, by far the world’s largest collection, and begins working to decode the banana genome.
2001: A new disease, called banana Xanthomonas wilt, begins to spread in Africa. It will turn out to be faster moving, just as virulent, and just as incurable as Panama disease.
2002: Master banana grower Phil Rowe commits suicide.
2003: Chiquita sells its Panamanian processing facility to a workers’ cooperative. Dole begins working with activists to improve conditions for banana workers. The first organically grown bananas are exported from Ecuador.
2003: The governments of Rwanda and Burundi, facing possible starvation of millions of refugees, accept modified bananas, developed by Swennen, for cultivation. Over 2 million plants are subsequently grown.
2005: In Honduras, Chiquita subcontracts FHIA, the Honduran Agricultural Research Foundation that occupies the company’s former lab facilities, for a secret project. Its goal is believed to be developing a Cavendish replacement in anticipation of what many now believe is inevitable: Panama disease will hit Central America.
2006: A national banana-research laboratory is opened in Uganda, the first on that continent. Its mission is to develop both conventional and bioengineered hybrids. Bioversity International, the umbrella organization for most of the world’s banana research, launches a traveling exhibition designed to advocate increased research on the fruit. The name of the program is No End to the Banana.
2007: Chiquita is fined $25 million by the U.S. Department of Justice for payments made to an acknowledged “terrorist organization” in Colombia. Dole is sued in U.S. courts for using chemicals that render workers sterile.
THE FUTURE: Right now, little has changed. Biotech bananas still hold the greatest potential, and though progress has been made in the lab, extensive field testing has yet to begin. Panama disease continues to spread.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Abella, Alex. The Total Banana. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1979.
Adams, Frederick Upham. Conquest of the Tropics. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1914.
Ancona, George. Bananas: From Manolo to Margie. New York: Clarion Books, 1982.
The Chiquita Banana Cookbook. New York: Avon Books, 1974.
Coates, Anthony G., ed. Central America: A Natural and Cultural History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.
Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954. Afterword by Piero Gleijeses. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.
García Márquez, Gabriel. One Hundred Years of Solitude. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Gosden, Chris, and Jon Hather, eds. The Prehistory of Food: Appetites for Change. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Jenkins, Virginia Scott. Bananas: An American History. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.
Langley, Lester D., and Thomas David Schoonover. The Banana Men: American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880–1930. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
Langley, Lester D. The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934. Chicago: Dorsey Press, 1988.
May, Stacy, and Galo Plaza Lasso. The United Fruit Company in Latin America. New York: National Planning Association, 1958.
McCann, Thomas P. An American Company: The Tragedy of United Fruit. Edited by Henry Scammell. New York: Crown, 1976.
Merrill, Tim, ed. Honduras: A Country Study. 3rd ed. Washington, DC: GPO for the Library of Congress, 1995.
Pringle, Peter. Food, Inc. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
Reynolds, Philip Keep. The Banana. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1927.
Rosengarten, Frederic. Wilson Popenoe: Agricultural Explorer, Educator, and Friend of Latin America. Lawai, HI: National Tropical Botanical Garden, 1991.
Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala. 1st ed. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982.
Schneider, Ronald M. Communism in Guatemala, 1944–1954. New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958.
Simmonds, N. W. Bananas. 2nd ed. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1966.
Stephens, Clyde S. Bananeros in Central America: True Stories of the Tropics. Alva, FL: Banana Books, 1989.
Stover, R. H., and N. W. Simmonds. Bananas. 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 1987.
Striffler, Steve, and Mark Moberg, eds. Banana Wars: Power, Production, and History in the Americas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Turback, Michael. The Banana Split Book: Everything There Is to Know About America’s Greatest Dessert. Philadelphia: Camino Books, 2004.
Wardlaw, C. W. Green Havoc in the Lands of the Caribbean. London: W. Bl
ack-wood & Sons, 1935.
Wilson, Charles Morrow. Dow Baker and the Great Banana Fleet. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1972.
———. Empire in Green and Gold. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968. First published 1947 by Henry Holt.
Zemurray, Sarah. One Hundred Unusual Dinners and How to Prepare Them. Boston: Thomas Todd Company, 1938.
Articles
Bucheli, Marcelo, and Geoffrey Jones. “The Octopus and the Generals: United Fruit Company in Guatemala.” Harvard Business School Case 9-805-146.
Bucheli, Marcelo. “Banana Wars Manoeuvres.” Harvard Business Review (2005).
———. “The Role of Demand in the Historical Development of the Banana Market, 1880–1960.” Presented at Stanford University, November 2001.
———. “United Fruit Company in Colombia: Impact of Labor Relations and Governmental Regulations on Its Operations, 1948–1968.” Essays in Economic and Business History (1997).
———. “United Fruit Company in Latin America.” In Banana Wars: Power, Production and History in the Americas, edited by Mark Moeberg and Steven Striffler. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003.
Buddenhagen, Ivan. “Whence and Whither Banana Research and Development?” Presented at Costa Rica Banana Biodiversity Conference, January 1992.
De Langhe, Edmond. “Banana and Plantain: The Earliest Fruit Crop.” In INIBAP Annual Report (1995).
———. “Diversity in the Genus Musa: Its Significance and Its Potential.” ISHS Acta Horticulturae 540 (2000).
Gallagher, Mike, and Cameron McWhirter. “Chiquita Secrets Revealed.” Cincinnati Enquirer, May 3, 1998.
Langdon, Robert. “The Banana as a Key to Early American and Polynesian History.” The Journal of Pacific History 28 (1993).
Marquardt, Steve. “Green Havoc: Panama Disease, Environmental Change, and Labor Process in the Central American Banana Industry.” American Historical Review (2001).
———. “Pesticides, Parakeets, and Unions in the Costa Rican Banana Industry, 1938–1962.” Latin American Research Review 37 (2002).
Pearce, Fred. “Going Bananas.” New Scientist (2003).
Ploetz, Randy, and K. G. Pegg. “Fusarium Wilt of Banana and Wallace’s Line: Was the Disease Originally Restricted to His Indo-Malayan Region?” Australasian Plant Pathology (1997).
Ploetz, Randy. “Panama Disease: Return of the First Banana Menace.” International Journal of Pest Management 40 (1994).
———. “Panama Disease, an Old Nemesis Rears Its Ugly Head, Parts 1 and 2.” Plant Health Progress (2005).
Robinson, Raoul A. “Crop Histories.” sharebooks.ca. ISBN 0-9731816-4-8.
Sheller, Mimi. “The Ethical Banana: Markets, Migrants, and the Globalisation of a Fruit.” Presented at Lancaster University, Center for Mobilities Research, February 2005.
Smith, Jeremy. “An Unapeeling Industry.” The Ecologist (2002).
Soluri, John. “Accounting for Taste: Export Bananas, Mass Markets, and Panama Disease.” Environmental History (2002).
———. “People, Plants, and Pathogens: the Eco-Social Dynamics of Export Banana Production in Honduras, 1875–1950.” Hispanic American Historical Review (2000).
“Tainted Harvest: Child Labor and Obstacles to Organizing in Ecuador’s Banana Plantations.” Human Rights Watch (2002): hrw.org.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
IN THE THREE YEARS SINCE THIS PROJECT BEGAN, I’ve met and spoken to many people in the banana world, and every one of them has been generous with their time, frank with their opinions, and patient with my learning curve. I’d especially like to thank Rony Swennen and the researchers and staff—especially the endlessly helpful Marleen Stockmans—at the Laboratory of Tropical Crop Improvement, Division of Crop Biotechnics, at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. I was shown equal courtesy and beyond-the-call-of-duty assistance by Adolfo Martinez, Juan Fernando Aguilar, and the entire staff at the Honduran Agricultural Research Foundation, in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Houbin Chen, at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou also welcomed me.
I also was privileged to conduct extensive phone interviews with Randy Ploetz of the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences and Gus Molina of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain.
Ann Lovell and Ken Bannister, both directors of their own banana museums, spent considerable time helping me to understand the American passion for the fruit. Ann was particularly generous in sharing postcards and archival images from her collection, many of which are reproduced in this book.
This project would have been impossible to complete without referring to the detailed and illuminating research conducted by the following scholars: John Soluri, Steve Marquardt, Ivan Buddenhagen, Mimi Sheller, Edmond de Langhe, Stephen Schlesinger, Stephen Kinzer, and Marcelo Bucheli. Specific references to their work can be found both in the text and in the bibliography.
Marina Carter, who is studying the life of Charles Telfair—a historical figure who was instrumental in developing the type of banana we eat today—helped provide vital clues in the effort to chart the path that particular fruit took as it spread throughout the world.
The United Fruit Historical Society (UFHS) is a valuable public resource, making freely available historic information on the company we now know as Chiquita. I took particular advantage of the UFHS biographies of the early banana pioneers, as told in Part III of this book.
The magazine article that launched this project was printed in the August 2005 issue of Popular Science, and I’m indebted to the editors of that publication—especially Mark Jannot and Kalee Thompson—for giving me my first opportunity to write about bananas. Several of the images that originally accompanied that article appear in this book. They were generously provided by Jeffrey Weiss, the photographer who accompanied me on that assignment.
Laureen Rowland, my original editor at Hudson Street Press, and Laurie Liss, my agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, both believed in the project and were endlessly patient as I worked my way through it. My friends Jocelyn Heaney and Michel Martinez encouraged me and refused to allow me to be a lazy writer. Sia Antunes was the best and most efficient research assistant imaginable. Danielle Friedman at Hudson Street provided much-needed continuity through the project’s twists and turns as well as a sharp final edit. Special thanks to Luke Dempsey, editor in chief at Hudson Street, who stepped in at a late stage and nurtured the book to completion.
Despite this formidable roster of assistance and inspiration, I’m sure I haven’t learned nearly enough about bananas. Any mistakes in this book are mine and mine alone.
Finally, a note on the frontspiece: This gorgeous image has appeared in two previous banana books—The Banana, by Philip Keep Reynolds, published in 1927, and 2000’s Bananas: An American History, by Virginia Scott Jenkins. I hope that this book proves as worthy a companion to that illustration as those were.
INDEX
Abaca disease
Abel
Adam
Adam and Eve (Cranach the Elder)
Adams, Frederick Upham
Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (Uganda)
Aerial spraying
Africa. (see also specific countries)
African plantain
Agriculture, U.S. Department of
Aguilar, Juan Fernando
Aguirre, Fernando
Alexander the Great
Ali al-Masudi
Allen, Frederick Lewis
Alvarez, Jose Manuel
American Civil War
American Company, An: The Tragedy of United Fruit (McCann)
American Financial Group
American Heritage magazine
American Seal-Kap
Antitrust laws
Aphids
Apples
Arana, Francisco
Arauco Peninsula
Arbenz, Arabella
Arbenz, Jacobo
Arbenz, Marie Crist
ina Vilanova
Arévalo, Juan José
Asim Agriculture Farm, Pakistan
Atlantic Fruit Company
Australia
Australimusa banana
Avalon Peninsula
Averbach, Bernard
Avocado
Azaleas
Baker, Lorenzo Dow
Bali
Banana, The: Its History, Cultivation, and Place Among Staple Foods (Reynolds)
Banana chips and peel
Banana companies
Atlantic Fruit
Chiquita
Cuyamel Fruit
Del Monte
Dole
Fyffes
Standard Fruit
United Brands
United Fruit
Vaccaro Brothers
Banana Cultures: Agriculture
Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (Soluri)
Banana Men, The (Langley and Schoonover)
Banana peel
Banana republics
Banana splits, invention of
Banana wine or beer
Bananas. (see also Banana companies)
Abaca disease and
from Africa
American consumption of
arrival in Americas
from Asia
beginning of banana industry
Black Sigatoka fungus and
boxed
breeding
Bunchy Top disease and
BXW (banana Xanthomonas wilt) and
Cavendish
Colombia banana massacre of
corm of
desert and cooking
early cultivation of
East African Highland
European consumption of
fair-trade
false
fe’i
first farm
in Garden of Eden
genetic heritage of