Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
ian arabicas cultivated at comparatively low altitudes. In the 1950s, mar-
kets emerged in the United States for instant coffee, a product that often
included blends of arabica and robusta coffee beans. Then, in the 1970s,
a
uent U.S. coffee drinkers turned increasingly to ''specialty coffees,''
high-priced arabicas that until recently were sold primarily by local and
regional roaster/retailers.
European and U.S. banana markets have also differed significantly
from one another. In the Caribbean and Central America, workers har-
vested Gros Michel bananas bound for Europe at a slightly younger age
than bunches bound for the United States in order to compensate for
the longer sea journey to European ports. As a result, Europeans became
accustomed to eating bananas that on average were smaller than those
available in the United States. Also, European markets imported Caven-
dish bananas from the Canary Islands long before U.S. markets accepted
them. In Jamaica, growers reoriented their production toward Britain in
the 1930s after the British Empire Marketing Board began subsidizing ba-
nanas produced in colonial territories. In 1947, the British Ministry of
Food approved the importation of Lacatan bananas. Jamaican producers
responded by replacing Gros Michel with the Panama disease-resistant
Lacatan variety more than ten years before Cavendish varieties replaced
GrosMichelintheUnitedStates.
42
Inthelatetwentiethcentury,additional
market segmentation occurred with the rising demand for ''organic'' and
''fair trade'' bananas, coffee, and other tropical commodities in Europe
and the United States.
My research also suggests that quality standards can function to seg-
ment mass markets by class and region. For example, in the early twenti-
ethcentury,U.S.fruitjobbersandretailerscateringtoa
uentcustomers
bought and sold top-grade bananas, while those operating in working-
class communities carried lesser grades. In addition, at least some job-
bers distinguished markets by region (recall the perception of Atlanta as
a ''dumping ground'' for inferior bananas). However, in contrast to cof-
fee markets, banana markets within the United States were not consis-
tentlysegmentedonthebasisofvarietyorplaceoforigin.Instead,grading
tended to be based on the size and physical appearance of Gros Michel
fruitwhenitreachedU.S.ports.Onesuspectsthatasimilarformofmarket
segmentation prevailed for fresh and canned fruits from California.
In many ways, the twentieth-century evolution of quality standards
for food commodities represented an effort to overcome, or at least con-
trol, variable biological processes. The environmental rootedness of agri-
culture ensured that product uniformity was more of an advertising claim
