Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
paid farmers one or two dollars to cut down their plantains, an offer that
Standard Fruit ocials claimed most cultivators readilyaccepted because
their plantings had already ceased to be productive.
The fruit companies' reports from this period tend to identify Chato
patches as sources of Moko infection that needed to be eliminated. Of
course, this view represented the perspective of export banana growers
and ignored the likelihood that the fruit companies bore primary respon-
sibility for introducing the pathogen to Honduras. It also failed to ac-
knowledge that disease vectors moved in multiple directions. There was
no reason to doubt that certain bee species, capable of carrying the bac-
teria for miles, traveled back and forth between plantain patches and ex-
portbananafarms.Moreover,thelargeareasplantedinMoko-susceptible
banana varieties enabled bacteria populations to grow much larger than
they would have in the absence of dense host populations. In other words,
export banana farms probably constituted greater reservoirs of bacte-
rial wilt than plantain farms. The history of Moko then, reveals a note-
worthy agroecological interaction between export and non-export agri-
culture that acutely affected the livelihoods of small-scale cultivators in
Honduras and elsewhere in Central America during the 1950s and 1960s.
Moko control also changed the work routines of field hands by both
creating new jobs and altering existing ones. The companies trained
workers to carry out Moko surveys and record the locations of diseased
plants so that other workers could swiftly eradicate them.
49
Ironically, the
resiliency of banana plants—easily damaged but hard to eradicate—im-
pededthefruitcompanies'effortstocontrolMoko.Themulti-stepprocess
involved cutting down the infected plant and its neighbors and spraying
the area with herbicides. If the infected plant was bearing fruit, workers
also applied an insecticide to kill any potential disease-carrying insects.
Moko crews revisited the site in subsequent weeks and reapplied herbi-
cides to any sprouts that emerged from the cut banana stalks.
50
Since it was impractical to maintain constant supervision of Moko
inspectors, the companies relied on indirect forms of monitoring. One ex-
Standard Fruit employee recalled that inspectors were always assigned to
cover the same area so that if a Moko outbreak occurred, managers would
beabletoidentifywhichworkerhadfailedtobevigilant.
51
Anotherformer
Standard Fruit worker held similar memories:
No one was watching to see if you were doing a thorough inspection.
I could have entered my area and laid down to rest and no one would
have been the wiser. But, if they found a diseased plant in my section,
