Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
initiated by the U.S. Department of Justice in 1954 concluded in 1958 when
company ocials signed a consent decree in which they agreed to sell
off the company's Guatemalan assets.
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That same year Samuel Zemur-
ray—the quintessential ''banana man''—resigned as Chairman of United
Fruit'sboardofdirectors.ThomasJeffersonCoolidge(adirectdescendant
of Thomas Jefferson) succeeded Zemurray for one year before being re-
placed by forty-year-old George Peabody Gardner.With profits and stock
values plummeting, Gardner began to ''clean house,'' forcing out long-
time executives including CEO Kenneth Redmond and Almyr Bump,
vice-presidentofagriculturaloperations.
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In1958,GardnerhiredThomas
Sunderland to be the company's president. Sunderland, who had previ-
ouslyservedasvicepresidentandgeneralcounselforStandardOilof Indi-
ana,wasanindustryoutsiderwhohadmadehisreputationhandlinganti-
trust litigation, not bananas. He quickly moved to reduce United Fruit's
operating costs both in the U.S. and the tropics. Noting that the annual
cost ($18 million) of replacing Panama disease-infected farms throughout
LatinAmericawasmorethanfourtimesgreaterthantheestimatedannual
costs ($4 million) of converting to pathogen-resistant varieties, Sunder-
land gave the go-ahead for a conversion to Cavendish bananas.
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In 1959, United Fruit's research division added a ''Plant Breeding and
Genetics'' department.
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The company enlisted botanists Paul Allen and
J. J. Ochse to travel to Southeast Asia in order to expand the genetic re-
sources available for banana breeding.
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Both the United States Depart-
ment of Agriculture and the State Department provided logistical sup-
port for the expeditions, the first of their kind carried out by the company
since Otto Reinking's work in the 1920s. Allen and Ochse sought out both
varieties of Musa whose fruits resembled Gros Michel (i.e., seedless trip-
loids) and those likely to possess disease resistance (including seeded dip-
loid varieties). In other words, the botanical missions sought to collect a
wider range of Musa specimens—including uncultivated varieties—than
had previously been assembled. United Fruit's new-found interest in dip-
loidplantsreflectedimportantchangesinapproachestobananabreeding.
Observing that seed-bearing diploids tended to possess disease resistance
butseldomproducedfruitswhoseshape,size,andcolorresembledexport
bananas, British breeders in the 1940s began to develop hybrid diploids
with''improved''fruitquality.These''elite''diploidlineswerethencrossed
withGrosMichel.
89
Thisstrategyguidedbanana-breedingprogramsinthe
Caribbean and Central America during the second half of the twentieth
century.
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