Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
companies to increase their use of irrigation water and thereby produce
greater quantities of heavy fruit.
36
Non-company producers, already con-
cerned about fruit rejections, feared that cheap irrigation waters would
lead to still greater rates of rejection. However, evidence suggests that
the growers' most dire predictions did not immediately come true. The
portion of total banana exports consisting of purchased fruit appears to
haveincreasedduringthethreeyearsfollowingthetaxreduction.Further-
more, the congressional debate over the amendment revealed that the law
establishing a $10 per hectare irrigation tax had not been enforced despite
the fact that the companies had undertaken irrigation projects since 1923.
Da Costa Gómez reported that the company had pumps operating on at
least five company farms, and El Pueblo published photos of a pumping
station located on the Ulúa.
37
In fact, confidential U.S. State Department
correspondence reported that the Tela Railroad Company had more than
10,000 hectares under irrigation at the time of the controversy!
38
In other
words, the evidence strongly suggests that non-company growers had al-
ready been competing against irrigated fruit for nearly a decade, during
whichtimetaxesonirrigationwatermaynothavebeencollected.
39
Never-
theless, contract growers' concerns about their inability to adopt capital-
intensive (and resource-consuming) production methods were hardly ir-
rational since the company stipulated that producers operate their farms
in conformity with its cultivation practices. As fruit company managers
in the tropics adopted novel methods to increase yields of high-quality
fruit and U.S. per capita consumption of bananas leveled off, small-scale
growers found themselves increasingly challenged to meet evolving pro-
duction standards.
Fruit rejections and variable prices aside, the U.S. banana companies
purchased tens of millions of banana bunches from contract growers dur-
ing the first third of the twentieth century. For a small number of plant-
ers, the banana trade contributed to the accumulation of large amounts
of capital. Fruit growers with medium-sized holdings such as Luís Ca-
ballero annually sold thousands of U.S. dollars' worth of fruit. For po-
quiteroswithout a purchase contract, earnings were probably scant.
40
The
conflict over the 1931 contract revealed how United Fruit's transporta-
tion monopoly, along with its ability to set quality standards, enabled the
company to exert considerable control over both poquiteros and the so-
calledfinquerosindependientes.Thewidespreadprotestsstagedbybanana
growers in 1931-1932 succeeded in securing a temporary government sub-
sidy, but did little to strengthen contract growers' position vis-à-vis the
U.S. fruit companies.
