Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
figure 6.2.AerialviewofSulavalleyshowingdrainagecanalsbuiltby
UnitedFruit(1949).UnitedFruitCompanyPhotographCollection.Baker
Library,HarvardBusinessSchool.
costs—associatedwithgrowingbananasintheSulavalleyatmid-century.
Of course, such projects could only be carried out by businesses with
hefty amounts of capital at their disposal; in 1949, ''more and more'' non-
company banana farms were being abandoned and/or converted to other
crops on account of plant diseases.
12
The soil-building projects yielded an unexpected benefit: scientists
observed that soils infected with Panama disease produced ''first class''
fruit for a number of years after having accumulated several rainy sea-
sons' worth of silt. This observation inspired United Fruit's Dr. Vining
Dunlap to begin a series of experiments in 1939 aimed at reclaiming
Panama disease-infected soils.
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Dunlap and his assistants temporarily
transformed diseased banana farms into shallow lake beds that were filled
