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...