Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
condition. The importance of shipping and processing is reflected in the
tendency across diverse commodity sectors for capital and power to con-
centrate precisely in the places that lay in between farms and kitchens.
For example, coffee mill owners, merchants, and roasters ''directed and
profited from the coffee economy far more than did growers.''
28
Asimilar
tendency prevailed in the twentieth-century sugar industry, where power
and wealth accumulated primarily in the hands of the families and cor-
porations who owned the centrales, railroads, and refineries. Legendary
''banana men,'' including Lorenzo Dow Baker, Minor Keith, the Vaccaro
brothers, and Samuel Zemurray, began their careers as shippers, railroad
builders, and wholesalers, not planters. In California, fruit packers be-
came key mediators between growers and wholesalers.
Throughout the Americas, the expansion of export commodity pro-
duction went hand in hand with railroad construction. For example, be-
tween 1834 and 1837, Cuban sugar planters financed the building of the
first railroad in Latin America (and the seventh built in the world).
29
In
Costa Rica and Guatemala, coffee interests financed the building of rail-
roads that in turn stimulated export banana production along the Carib-
bean coasts of those two nations. United Fruit's two Honduran subsidi-
aries were tellingly named ''railroad''—not banana—companies. Finally,
the completion of a transcontinental railroad in the United States helped
to make possible the rapid overland transport of bulkycommodities from
California to Midwest and Eastern markets.
For all of the commodities in question, post-harvest processing was
crucial for transforming plant materials into marketable products. How-
ever,thereweresomeimportantdifferences.Inthecaseofcoffee,thevalu-
able part of the plant is the seed (i.e., the coffee ''bean''). The fruit pulp
is removed via washing or drying, processes that have historically taken
placeincloseproximitytocoffeefarms.Oncedepulped,''green''coffeecan
be stored for extended periods prior to roasting; once roasted, vacuum-
sealed coffee has a relatively long shelf life. Also, roasters could, and often
did, blend coffees from different regions. In the case of sugarcane, rail-
roads served to transport cut cane to large mills where cane juice was ex-
tracted as quickly as possible in order to maximize sucrose content. The
semi-processed product was then shipped to the United States where it
was further refined into white, granular sugar. In sum, both coffee and
sugar historically are highly processed in ways that completely change
their appearance and flavor.
In contrast to coffee and sugar, bananas and oranges needed only
minimal processing prior to shipment. In fact, the less the fruits were
