Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
mass-market structures that impeded the adoption of disease-resistant
varieties,andtheagroecologicalstructuresassociatedwithmonocultures.
By the early 1940s, both the processes and the organization of export
banana production had changed dramatically since the early twentieth
century. The small- and medium-scale cultivators who had formed the
backbone of the banana trade all but disappeared. The decline of non-
company growers in Honduras resulted from a historical conjuncture of
processes occurring on local and international scales. The spread of Siga-
toka created a crisis for non-company growers whose economicwellbeing
was already weakened by both the severe international economic crisis of
the early 1930s and the 1935 flood. For the reduced number of finqueros
independienteswho persisted on the North Coast, the demands of disease
controlgreatlyerodedtheiralreadylimitedautonomy.Butthedirectionin
which modern disease control proceeded was by no means a purely ''tech-
nical'' process informed by neutral scientific evidence. Dunlap's Sigatoka-
control systems favored large-scale producers with capital reserves and
high-yielding soils.The system's logicwas a self-reinforcing one that only
made sense in a specific context shaped by regional agroecologies, mass
markets, and the fruit companies' large labor forces.
the work of sigatoka control
In December 1937, U.S. diplomat John D. Erwin observed Sigatoka
control operations while touring the Tela Railroad Company's farms:
Near Progreso, [Tela Railroad Company manager] Mr. Cloward
stopped the [rail] car and had us go into the edge of one of the banana
farms to watch the spraying process in operation. The chemical
solution which is used necessitates pipe lines laid in the fields at two-
hundred foot intervals and the native employees, with a hose, spray the
plants from four sides to make certain all the fungi are destroyed. Then
the ''stem'' of bananas, which is cut off the plant, is carried to a tank
alongside the electric railway, where it is dipped in another chemical
solution to nullify the effects of the first solution; and, then as a last
treatment, it is dipped into a tank of water to remove all of the
chemicals from the first before shipment. It was obvious that this is a
rather costly operation, because each stem or stalk of bananas has to be
dipped eight times in the chemical tank and four times into the water
tank to bring it to a state where it is ready to be shipped.
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