The Lives and Time of Miss Chiquita - Banana Cultures - page 162

the case in the 1920s with Lacatan bananas, the new variety met with con-
siderable resistance from U.S. fruit distributors who complained that the
thin-skinned Cavendish was highly susceptible to bruising and scarring
while in transit from farm to retail market. As late as 1955, studies of
banana jobbers indicated that ''the quality and appearance of the fruit''
was a ''major determinant'' of the profitability of their businesses. 69 Gros
Michel remained the banana of choice for most fruit dealers, who tended
to refer to all other bananas simply as ''varieties,'' a lack of specificity that
reflected the extent to which jobbers considered Gros Michel to be with-
out peer.
Asthe1950scametoaclose,Standard'snon-GrosMichelexportssuf-
fered a high rate of rejection and discounting. 70 In 1958, the company's
public relations department published a statement in a Honduran news-
paper claiming that U.S. wholesalers complained about the appearance,
shape, and ripening characteristics of Giant Cavendish fruit. The com-
pany added, ''It's widely known that when there is an abundance of Gros
Michel fruit, as was the case in 1957, the price of the Giant Cavendish falls
dramatically.'' 71 Several months later, Standard Fruit published another
statement claiming that market prices for Giant Cavendish continued to
be low and that the company's Honduran division was losing money. 72
Both statements appeared during a period of labor unrest and probably
wereintendedtoconvincetheHonduranpublicthattheclaimsofstriking
workers were unreasonable. But they also reflected the continued resis-
tance of market structures to non-Gros Michel bananas.
In 1957, Standard Fruit erected an experimental banana packing plant
in Honduras. Workers de-stemmed, washed, and selected hands of ba-
nanas before packing the fruit in cardboard boxes.The idea of the experi-
ment was to cut down on the numberof times that the delicate Cavendish
fruit had to be handled prior to reaching retail markets. After two years
of trial marketing in urban areas in the United States, company o cials
announced in 1960 that they were on theverge of ''the greatest innovation
in the history of the banana industry—precooled, plantation boxing.'' 73
In fact, the idea of packing bananas in boxes was far from revolutionary;
Standard Fruit had experimented with exporting boxed bananas in the
early 1930s. Driven in part by the growth of self-serve supermarkets, fruit
jobbers in the United States began to deliver bananas to retail outlets in
boxes before World War II. By the mid-1950s, jobbers cut, packed, and
weighed virtuallyall of the bananas that they handled. 74 Not surprisingly,
Standard Fruit ocials reported that retailers were ''unanimous'' in their
approval of boxed bananas because they were well suited for self-service