Ethical buying can only help the world’s poorest fruit producers 
The Universe
(July 16, 2006)
Thousands of jobs are at stake in the banana industry in the developing countries. Big and small-time growers are deeply worried and the industry in the Philippines, Latin America and parts of Africa depends on the plantation variety known as the Cavendish. It is for the most part a variety owned and controlled by wealthy families and multinationals.
I remember visiting a village near Davao, where I met Joanna. She was a frail child suffering from asthma and skin disease. She was a plantation worker and although the law bans child labor, there are nevertheless almost two million of them, hard at work in the sugar cane fields and banana plantations. Joanna and her parents worked long hours and sprayed the tall banana plants with dangerous chemicals.
The spray is vital because the deadly fungus known as the Black Sigatoka has developed resistance to toxic sprays, but 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. Every plant is a clone of its parent and it has no immunity to the fungus.
Pesticide, you will be unhappy to know, makes up one-third of the cost of a banana. It takes the goodness out of that long spotless banana and they don’t taste like natural bananas of course. The dangers of monoculture are many but extinction is the inevitable. Another banana, the Gros Michel was wiped out in the late 1950’s when fungus overwhelmed their immune system.
The Cavendish will soon go that way too and the price of bananas will soar and it may be a chance for the small producers to get into the market. Many are fair trade producers and they grow natural organic bananas. If you see these, go for them.
The big firms 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, what with the cutting-down of rainforests and widespread pollution from plantations carried on the wind has killed of many wild varieties as well.
When it comes to fair trade, dried fruit shoppers look for Preda’s 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 break up a price-fixing cartel in the Philippines. When we offered high prices, we cornered the supply. The other cartel members had to offer similar high prices to get mangos and the prices soared giving the farmers a just price for the first time in many years.
It’s not need easy but despite the pressures of a profit-greedy labeling organization to force us to pay for a fair trade certification, or else face withdrawal from the market, Preda products are thriving.
They are being sold in outlets such as Spar and Waitrose - even Tesco has them. Waitrose has given back £340,000 to the 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 - to help the producers to improve their standard of life. We can all do something to change the unjust system – use purchasing power. [End]
