Diario las Américas Newspaper, January 6, 1957, Page 22

THE BANANA BUSINESS SPECIAL OAS COMMITTEE STUDIES ITS PROBLEMS By GEORGE C. COMPTON Mowers formed at base of trunk “shoot” from top abount nine months: after planting. ee oh ees * WORLD. TOTAL «6c ecree eres a TOTAL 23,338 # seme «as V26,524 TO MANY OF THE REPUBLICS and possessions in the American tropics, bananas are big business. The western Hemisphere supplies more than 80 per cent of world ex- ports of this delicious, nourishing, but perishable fruit. In 1953 ba- nanas accounted for 61 per cent of the value of all Honduran ex- ports, 53 per cent of Panamanian, 42 per cent of Costa Rican, per cent of Ecuadorean, and 14 per cent of Guatemalan. Brazil is also a large grover, but mainly for domestic consumption, export- ing principally to Argentina and Uruguay. The biggest customer is the United States, which takes about half of all world shipments, During the past decade bhoom- ing production —especially im Ecuador, where exports soared from a pre-World War II average of just under two milion stems @ year to nearly twenty-four mil- lion in 1955, the fifth consecutive year it led the world in banana shipments— has: brought stiffen ing competition and worries about how to maintain profitable prices. Slackening of internatinal demand for bananas would be a seriour threat to producers, since they can- mot stockpile them. At the same time, plant disases harass growers im many areas, Aware of the need for joint ac- tion in the face of this situation, the meeting of Finance Ministers: im Petropolis, Brazil, in 1954 called for a Special Committee on Ba- manas to be established by the In- ter-American Economic and Social Council. This followed the patterm of a similar group set up earlier for coffee. The Special Committee was to be a clearing house of in- formation on the banana trade; it was to study the problems and particularly the possibility of creat- ing a Banana Technical Center. If the Committee decides that broad international meesures are necessa- ry; the Economic end Social Coun- -eil will convoke an inter-American Banana Conference in Quinto. Sta- tisties on the trade in the past have been scanty, late in publication, or not uniform (some by weight, others by stems, with different - countries using’ varying conver- sion factors from pounds to stems) and there has been less interna+ tional sharing of research results sohuld: be. So: an OAS team com- posed of two statisticians, one eco- Reprinted from AMERICAS, monthly magazine published by the Pan American Union in English, Spanish and Portu- guese. nomist, and two plant pathologists is now touring the major produc- ing and consuming. countries to survey present conditions, both in marketing and disease control, and to help organize up-to-date statis- tical reporting. Fron ancient times bananas have been prized in Southeast Asia, where they were known as “the fruit of the wise men”. Some au- thors have even maintained that the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden was a banana, nor an aple as often supposed. The Book of Ge- nesis is noncommittal on this point. During the Middle Ages, banana cultivation moved westward along Arab trade routes to Africa. It was introduced to the Western He- misphere at Santo Domingo in 1516 by a Spanish priest, Fray Tomas de Berlanga;. who brought some rootstocks from the Canary Islands. As the historian Gonzalo Fernan- Bunchies are washed and checked, taken to port by rail. varieties, Spraying to control Sigatoka disease is costly, Researchere seek cheaper method or resistant dez de Oviedo y Valdés reported, “They spread to ethe other settle- . ments on this island and to all’ the other islands inhabited by Chris- tians. And) they have been carried to the mainland, and in every port they have flourished”, For a long time, however, the banana remained a delicacy that only the people of the tropics could enjoy. Today’s large-scale trade in North America and’ Europe did not begin until the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1879 a bearded Cape Cod sea captain, Lo- renzo D. Baker, brought back a few bunches of bananas from Ja- maica, found a ready market, and went into business. Fifteen years later, with Andrew W. Preston and eight other partners, he formed the modest Boston Fruit Compa- ny. Meanwhile, Minor C6 Keith, who was building a railroad in Cos- ta Rica, tried banana growing in a search for freight for the line. The experiment was highly successful, and he expandedi his activities in- to the Santa Maria area of Colom- bia and’ what is now the republic of Panama In 1899, these two groups joined forces, establishing the United Fruit Company. The story of the subsequent growth of the trade, and the rising power of United, is replete with ruthless elimination of absorption of competitors, fabulous land grants, international border disput- es, and labor troubles. At the s:'ne time; it is the story of the deve'ov- | ment of a vast, efficient network of plantations, fleets of refrigerat- ed ships, radio communications, medical services, and a distridu- tion system blanketing the United States. The saga of those early pro- moters —and. of later colorful fi- gures: like Samuel Zemurray, who got his start in New Orleans: sell- ing fruit that United disposed of as too ripe, developed irrigation me- thods to produce quality fruit and built the Cuyamel Fruit Company into the giant’s most formidable rival, sold out to United, and, when he saw the price of its stock tum- bling disastrously in 1982, came back to give the company the ma- gic touch of his personal manage- ment— is too involved to summar- ize fairly in less than a book. (Se- veral have been published’ on the subject). Despite strikes in some areas and arguments over expropiation of land in others, United’s rela- tions with labor and with the gov- ernments of the countries where Posie were SB aialeeset aereaniawe