Written by: Charissa Zehr
Every January we have an MCC Honduras team meeting to do planning for the year ahead. This year, our meeting was in El Progreso, an interesting city not too far from San Pedro. The “valley of Sula” or the greater San Pedro area has a lot of manufacturing and production that is sent to the major port city of Puerto Cortes for export. Bananas and sugar cane are major cash crops in the warm climate of the flat valley, as opposed to in the western mountains (where Santa Rosa is located) that mostly rely on cash crops of coffee and tobacco.
One of the highlights of this retreat was being able to visit a banana plantation and learn about the whole process–from the tree to the Dole box that shows up in North American grocery stores. It was fascinating! (Full disclosure: I have a mild obsession and colorful history of many a factory tour, and I am a nerdy business major that always loves to find out more about these processes).
We visited a cooperative of Honduran land-owners that grow and sell their banana crop to Dole (legally known as the Standard Fruit Co.) The other major producer and exporter of bananas is Chiquita (known as United Fruit Co.) and both have an extensive network of their own plantations and Honduran-owned plantations that they buy from. Both companies (US based) have a history of rather exploitative business practices in land use and the way they have used and abused cheap Honduran labor for financial gain.
It was fascinating to learn about the process from start to finish: From the teams of men that harvest the heavy bunches from the trees (that only produce once in their lifetime!) to the others spraying them down and judging proper size and texture with the naked eye; to others that wash the bunches, cut them, put a sticker on each bunch, glue boxes together, pack them in boxes and load the boxes into the truck.
Labor is cheap in Honduras and while some processes have been adapted to be more “automated” or efficient, it is easier to have mobs of people doing the same monotonous tasks than to pay for expensive machinery that can do the same (outsourcing ringing a bell?). While the cooperative works to keep a positive work environment for their employees (about 555 in total), they are always under pressure from Dole to implement higher, more rigid standards while lowering costs and selling at lower prices.
Each box of bananas is 40 pounds. The co-op sells the box to Dole for $4.20. That is roughly $.10 per pound and I would estimate about 12 people touch the bunch of bananas before it even makes it on to the truck. A woman working in quality control and cutting the bananas into bunches of 4, 6 or 8 to be boxed up and shipped will make about 250 Lempiras (about $13) a day. Adds up to about 5000 Lempiras ($250) a month, which is not even the national minimum wage.
It is easy to look at the situation and think “well yeah, but at least they have employment” and that surely is an important point in the difficult Honduran economy. But you also have to consider how hard the cooperative has to fight against a giant multi-national corporation that wants to squeeze every penny they can from that box of bananas. Dole has incredible influence over how things are run–they say no pesticides can be used, and the co-op has to eliminate all pesticides. Dole sets the rules, and the co-op must play by those rules to stay in the game.
I marvel at how something as simple as a banana, a fruit that doesn’t even need much processing or packaging requires so many steps! Imagine that for every simple item that you buy at the grocery store and it is astounding. To think of every person that has a hand in getting the banana from the tree in Honduras to the store in the States is quite incredible.
When I consider all the elements of fair-trade and worker’s rights, foreign investment and foreign exploitation, it makes me feel helpless to make a change. I can’t help but wonder if more North Americans were able to come to Honduras and see the whole process and the way people work on the plantation, would they be willing to spend a few more cents on their bunch of bananas? Would it make a difference in the way we think about the supply chain and the voice we have as consumers to influence the decisions and profits of the most monstrous multinational companies? I hope it does, so I’ve shared this with you…maybe you will stop and consider what companies are doing abroad and what responsibility we have as consumers in those decisions.
Reblogged this on Mennonites.