B is for Bananas

The UK’s most popular fruit (the banana overtook the apple in 1998) is also, behind the scenes, one of the most controversial of foods.

Colonialism, both historic and neo, lies at the heart of the politics of the banana. Growing mostly in the tropics — apart from a crop in Iceland, where the geysers provide a suitable localised climate — banana production was encouraged by European colonial countries such as Britain after we started to grow our own sugar beet, decimating the sugar cane trade.
 

The UK has long given preference to Caribbean bananas, a practice fostered by historical obligation. This is now under pressure from international trade rules. The Caribbeans say their less intensive production of small, sweet bananas cannot compete with the bigger, blander ‘dollar bananas’ from Latin America, so-called because many are from companies funded by American capital.

Fairtrade bananas, from the Windward Islands of the Caribbean as well as such countries as Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana and Peru, throw such smaller-scale farmers a lifeline, offering them a decent wage and conditions. Bananas are the most sprayed food crop in the world. Fairtrade also offers environmental standards.

Fairtrade now accounts for one in five of the 156 bananas
we each eat every year. Given that the fruit is transported by boat rather than plane, they give us a taste of the tropics without a crippling eco-footprint.

Banana Link: www.bananalink.org.uk