Fair Trade will save the fruits of the world 
(republishing, copying, no restrictions)
By: Father Shay Cullen
Thousands of jobs are at stake in the banana industry in the developing countries. Big and small time growers are deeply worried. The industry in the Philippines, and in Central, South America and parts of Africa, totally depend on the plantation variety known as the Cavendish. These are all poor countries and they supply the world with the bananas. It is for the most part a plantation variety and that means, owned and controlled by wealthy families and multinational corporations.
I remember visiting a village near Davao, in Mindanao, where I met Joanna. She was a frail child suffering from asthma and skin dieses. She was a plantation worker and although the law bans child labor, there are nevertheless almost 2 million of them, hard at work in the sugar cane fields and banana plantations. They have to work hard as the pay is so low and all the children can’t eat. Joanna and her parents worked long hours and sprayed the tall banana plants with dangerous chemicals. Joanna was suffering for it.
They worked long hours with little protective clothing or sufficiently protective masks in plantation owned by a rich family. They sold the crop, if it met the standards, to the big banana corporation. They, in turn, shipped it to Hong Kong, Japan, Britain and everywhere else bananas are sold.
The spray is vital because the deadly fungus known as the Black Sigatoka has developed resistance to the toxic sprays. But the people have not. The Cavendish itself is the problem because it is a terminator plant, bred by the growers so that it has no seeds, is sterile and cannot reproduce itself .It has to be grown by planting cuttings from a mature plant. This is the backbreaking work that Joanna’s father did. Every plant is a clone of its parent and it has no immunity to the fungus.
Pesticide, you will be unhappy to know make up one third of the cost of a banana. It takes the goodness out of that big long spotless banana. They don’t taste delicious like natural bananas of course. The dangers of monoculture are many but extinction is the enviable end. Another variety of banana the Gros Michel was wiped out in the late 1950’s when the fungus overwhelmed their immune system.
Now the Cavendish will soon go that way too and the price of bananas will soar. It may be a chance for the small Caribbean producers to get into the market and reap a windfall. Many are Fair Trade producers and they grow natural organic bananas. If ever you see these, go for them. The big corporations have sent hundreds of scientists looking for the wild variety of banana to harvest their genes and infuse them into the Cavendish to strengthen its resistance. But the destruction of the environment, the cutting of rainforests and widespread pollution from plantations carried on the wind has killed of many wild varieties too.
When it comes to Fair Trade, dried fruit shoppers look for Preda dried pineapple and mangos. For 32 years, we worked to bring justice and dignity to the farmers and to end the suffering of child workers like Joanna. The development of the chemical free Preda fair trade dried mango helped to break up a price fixing cartel in the Philippines. When we offered high and higher prices, we cornered the supply. The other cartel members had to offer similar high prices to get mangos and the prices soared giving the framers a just price for the first time in many years.
The good quality supermarkets are where you can get Preda dried fruits and help people overcome exploitation and poverty.
Despite the pressures of a unmentionable profit greedy labeling organization to force us to pay for a Fair Trade certification, or else be removed front the market, Preda products are thriving in wholesome outlets like Spar Waitrose, Dunnes, and Superquinn, even Tescos has them too! So, do your share for fair trade and ask for Preda fair trade dried fruits.
Waitrose has given back $620,000 to the fruit growing communities from where they get their fruit in the developing world. It is raising almost another million dollars for education projects for the communities in South Africa. This is one of criteria of fair trade, profit sharing on human development and to help the producers to improve their standard of life. We can all do something to change the unjust system – use purchasing power. [End]
