Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
He next turned to developing a cost-effective means for applying the
fungicide on a large scale. Dunlap experimented with a variety of tech-
nologies, including knapsack sprayers, overhead irrigation equipment,
and airplanes before settling on a stationary, ground spray system mod-
eled after systems used in U.S. orchards. The system consisted of a cen-
tral mixing/pumping station where copper sulfate, lime, and water were
mixed in 2,000-gallon tanks. Diesel-driven pumps distributed the solu-
tion through a network of pipes laid across the farms. Operating in pairs,
workers attached hoses to valves found at intervals along the pipes. The
workers moved from plant to plant, coating the banana plants with a fine
mist of Bordeaux spray applied with a high-pressure nozzle. Upon finish-
ing two rows of banana plants, the hose would be attached to a valve fur-
ther down the line and the process repeated. Although the ground-spray
system was both expensive to install (more than double that of airplane
dusting) and labor intensive, Dunlap believed that its superior ability to
control Sigatoka compensated for its high cost.
23
After two years and one million dollars' worth of intensive testing,
United Fruit managers decided to invest in ground spraying on a large
scale. During 1937 the area serviced by spray systems rose from less than
500hectaresto8,900hectares.
24
Twoyearslater,thecompanyhadinstalled
equipment on 14,500 hectares in Honduras, and Bordeaux spraying was
considered to be a part of ''ordinary farm routine.''
25
Thecompanyintro-
duced the spray system throughout its Central American operations, in-
cluding its new divisions on the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.
26
In order to
implementthesystemonalargescale,thecompanyimportedpipes,high-
pressurepumps,storagetanks,chemicals,andotherequipmentfromGer-
many and the United States. The company's consumption of copper sul-
fate (thousands of tons per year) quickly outstripped the available supply
on international markets, prompting United Fruit's management to send
mining engineers to Honduras in the hope of finding a local source of raw
materials.
27
Additional material and labor costs resulted from the need to
removeheavyresiduesfromthefruitbunchesafterspraying.Thecleaning
process involved dunking harvested bananas into an acid solution sev-
eral times followed by a water rinse. All told, Sigatoka control procedures
increased the cost of production by an estimated 40 percent.
28
Less than five years after the epidemic hit the Sula valley, Bordeaux
spraying enabled banana exports from Honduras to return to their pre-
1935 levels. British researcher ClaudeWardlaw—who in the past had been
highly critical of Central American banana culture—considered the de-
velopment and rapid deployment of Dunlap's control system to be one
