The Banana Wars Flashcards
What is the life of a Banana?(6 Steps)
1: Bananas are planted in mass at a plantation in Asia, Latin America(Ecuador) and Africa.
2: Bananas are grown for 9 months, picked, sorted and transported to a packing house.
3: Bananas are cleaned, packaged and transported to a shipping port.
4: They are placed in sealed containers and loaded onto a container ship.
5: They are transported by truck to supermarket warehouses.
6: Bananas are ripped for 8-10 days and shipped to individual stores.
What is the banana’s rank in Canada’s favourite fruit chart?
Second.
Where are Bananas grown?
They are unable to be grown in Canada’s climate so they are grown in Central and South America, about 5000 km away.
Where do most of Canada’s bananas come from?
Most of the bananas sold in Canada were grown on the plantations owned by transnational corporations.
What is the number 1 fruit in Canada?
Apples, which can be grown in Canada but are twice the price of bananas.
Why are bananas cheaper? (3 reasons)
1: Transnational corporations use economies of scale in the bananas trade and reduce the costs by producing, using and buying things in large quantities.
2: On plantations, banana yields are very high because of the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Often, there is an overabundance of bananas; high numbers in supply lead to lower prices.
3: Transnational companies often own their own fleets of ships, containers and warehouses, giving themselves the best deals possible to save on shipping and storage costs. This control of ships, containers and warehouses in the banana distribution cycle is known as vertical integration.
Define vertical integration.
When the supply chain of a company is owned by the company itself.
What can vertical integration lead to? (4 Things).
1: Lower overall costs.
2: Lower uncertainty in the production process.
3: Weak motivations for performance at the bottom of the supply chain.
4: Monopolization of the market.
Why are workers in Central America underpaid? (7 reasons)
1: Labour in Central America is very cheap compared to Canada and there are very few labour unions in south America to push for better wages.
2: Ecuador banana workers earn about $6.40 CAD a day. Alberta workers earn $81.60 in the same amount of time.
3: In 2002, the average Ecuadorian banana picker received $ 6.90 per day for a 6 day work week.
4: No Overtime.
5: Women and children are paid less.
6: No benefits like vacation time or sick leave.
7: Estimated pay for basic needed is 220 per month.
What are the political dimensions of the banana wars?
The banana wars began when the European government gave preferential treatment to formal colonies’ bananas. Transnational companies protested because they though it was unfair. Chiquita(A transnational banana company) convinced the american government to take a case to the World Trade Organization. In 1997, WTO ruled that European countries must change some of the trade rules that helpped banana farmers in their former colonines. Unsatisfied, the American government imposed tariffs on European products.
What are the environmental dimensions of the banana wars?
Large parts of rain forests were cut down for the banana farms which cost them the biodiversity. 60% of Ecuador’s rain forest has been lost to banana farms. In 1992, a UN Conference on environment and development(Earth Summit), was held to discuss how governments and organizations could encourage economic development while protecting the environment. The area of focus was large scale agriculture, or agribusiness, such as transnational control at banana production.
What were the environmental and health concerns that were brought to the forefront? (5 Concerns)
- Destruction of natural habitats leading to a reduction in biodiversity.
- Reduction in biodiversity leads to a risk of crop destruction by pests and diseases.
- Heavy use of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides are hazardous to the health of the workers, human health in general and it runs off into our water systems harming marine life.
- Indigenous peoples are often displaced.
- Environmental destruction due to the heavy use of chemicals.
