Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
figure 6.4.BananafarmwithPanamadisease(1955).Noteirregular
patternofhighlyinfectedareas.IntheforegroundisamodelUnitedFruit
bananalaborcamp.UnitedFruitCompanyPhotographCollection.Baker
Library,HarvardBusinessSchool.
duras as the world's leading banana exporter. By the end of the decade,
40 percent of U.S. banana imports came from Ecuador's Panama disease-
free soils.
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The result was a glut of inexpensively produced bananas at a
time when production costs were on the rise in Honduras and both per
capita consumption and the average retail price of bananas in the United
Stateswereflat.
83
Between 1950 and 1960, United Fruit's earnings fell pre-
cipitously from $66 million to $2 million; share prices plummeted from
$70 to $15 over the same period.
To make matters worse for United Fruit, the anti-trust investigation
