Chiquita Bananas

So on Friday after La Selva, we stopped at the Chiquita banana plantation on our way to Puerto Viejo. Upon entering the plantation, all you could really see were rows and rows of banana trees, and some random columns of rain forest placed in between fields of the bananas. As it turns out, these columns of rain forest is actually a very eco-friendly practice done by some banana farms. These columns allow for wildlife to continue living in the area where the farm is, and it also allows species to travel easily from column to column, and eventually across the entire farm. Not to mention it´s a lot more trees helping out with carbon cleaning and water collection. Chiquita claims they keep well in mind the preservation of ecology and worker health. They provide their workers with proper protection and do blood tests on them every three months checking for whatever illnesses they might acquire. They also say they use the safest pesticides and fertilizers possible, although I question if the safest ones are even slightly safe at all. Also, in Cafe Britt fashion, they decided to give a very weird performance for us. The problem with this performance was that they did it completely in spanish, and hardly any of us could understand what was going on if it wasn´t translated by someone. It was interesting to say the least. We also got to see their sorting process, which was actually fairly interesting. They were sure to clean the bananas, but also to keep enough good water circulation so that workers would not have to come in contact with the soap. The water circulation also helped ensure that the cleaning agent was removed from the bananas by the time they were stickered and boxed. Any rejected bananas were taken away to be used in food products which did not require whole bananas. The workers looked content, and the working conditions seemed very friendly. Finally, after their theatrics, we left the plantation and headed for the coast. Lets eat bananas.

Burf

Naners

Bananas. Apparently bananas are a very important part of Costa Rican exports. In fact it was the leading export until tourism took the number one spot in recent years. Costa Rica is still the second largest exporter of bananas behind Ecuador, with somewhere around 115,000 hectares of banana plantations. The main company that exports bananas is Dole (or the United Fruit Company). Some ecological problems, however, are presenting themselves with bananas. For example, the bananas are shipped in blue bags, which can commonly get tossed into the ocean where turtles will mistake them for jellyfish and choke on them (dying, of course). Also, the United Fruit Company had to shut down several of it's operations because of lawsuits from their pesticides running into water supplies or the ocean. Workers are finally paid fairly. United Fruit Co. at one time had about 12,000 illegal workers who they would pay a wage far under the standard minimum wage set by Costa Rica. Once punished by the courts for this, all workers on banana plantations (to our knowledge) are paid fairly and given fair hours. More to come later on this topic...