Title: The Banana Trade War — Global Issues
Headings: The Banana Trade War
The Banana Trade War
On this page:
Bananas are serious business
The WTO rules against the Largest Aid and Trade Pact, the Lomé Convention
A trade war between US and Europe: two banana-importing consumer nations
We will act multilaterally when we can and unilaterally when we must
Chiquita
Caribbean region’s dependency on bananas is unhealthy
More Information
Page options
Advertisements
Most popular pages

Content: As Rebecca Cohen in her above-mentioned article summarized, the United Fruit Company thrived on the lack of unity, poverty, and corrupt governments in Central America. Businesses were able to get favorable terms, the best land, and vertical integration of the whole production and supply processes making them large, powerful and enormously influential entities. Even during times tough times for United Fruit Company, (such as when they favored Hitler’s rapidly industrializing Germany over the US just as the Second World War was going to break out), they managed to get by and resorted to information/perception management (i.e. propaganda) and philanthropy to foster a more positive image of itself. ( Chapman, pp. 111–119)
Dole and Chiquita are, in effect, inheritors of the empires that their predecessors created (Dole was formerly the Standard Fruit Company and United Fruit Company mostly survives as Chiquita though none have such overt geopolitical practices that their earlier companies were accused of). Image: Women in Belize sorting bananas and slicing them from bunches. ( Source: Wikipedia)
Just 5 companies—Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, Fyffes and Noboa—control some 80% of the international banana trade, according to Banana Link, a UK-based organization campaigning for fairer and sustainable banana trade. Cohen, mentioned above, summarizes how workers are exploited by a race to the bottom where supermarkets demand lowest prices for consumers, which results in low wages for workers in plantations.