Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
example, when the New Orleans-based steamship Margaret docked in
Roatán in 1881, the captain reported that he was seeking to buy ''green
fruit [bananas] and coconuts'' either on the islands or in the vicinity of
the mainland ports of Trujillo and Omoa.
19
In 1884, Guillermo Melhado
of Trujillowrotethatexperimentswithplantingexportbananashadgiven
''verygoodresultsonthiscoast,''andhepredictedthattheywouldbecome
a leading export.
20
Five years later, in an attempt to strengthen banana
exports, the national government exempted steamships servicing Puerto
Cortés from port duties.
21
By the late 1880s, bananas were the leading ex-
port from Omoa and reports indicated a sharp rise in demand for fruit
in La Ceiba.
22
U.S. consular agent William Burchard, apparently swayed
by the profitability of growing bananas on the mainland, founded the
Burchard-Honduras Fruit Company near the mouth of the Sangrelaya
Riverin1891.
23
By 1899, banana production had achieved su
cient scale to prompt
the Honduran government to authorize a survey of existing farms in
order to ''make known one of the great sources of wealth on our Atlantic
Coast.''
24
Thesurveyteamdocumented1,032bananafarmscoveringsome
10,300 hectares of land in seven municipalities. Five of these municipali-
ties were situated along the coast where growers had access to both flat,
fertile soils and the shippers who plied the coastal waters.The exceptions
to this pattern—the municipalities of San Pedro Sula and Villanueva—
lay along a stretch of the never-completed Interoceanic Railroad that ran
from Puerto Cortés to a point several kilometers south of San Pedro Sula.
Thevast majorityof the export banana farms recorded in 1899 were small:
nearly70percent(716of1,032)werelessthan7hectaresinsizeand85per-
cent (880 of 1,032) did not exceed 14 hectares. However, the average size
of banana farms varied among municipalities. For example, in San Luis
98% of the growers had fewer than 14 hectares of bananas and the largest
plantings were only 21 hectares. In Puerto Cortés, where nearly 50% of the
bananafarmsweresmallerthan4hectares,only11%exceeded14hectares;
the largest banana farm was around 40 hectares. Banana farms in El Por-
venir, La Ceiba, and San Pedro Sula lay at the other end of the spectrum:
only 25% of the La Ceiba cultivators and 33% of those in El Porvenir and
SanPedroSulaheldfewerthan4hectaresinbananas.Thelargestholdings
(around 70 hectares and up) were concentrated in the neighboring mu-
nicipalitiesof ElPorvenirandLaCeiba.
25
Thetwenty-eightlargestbanana
plantations listed in the 1899 survey—less than 3% of the total number of
banana farms—occupied nearly 1,700 hectares (about 28%) of the total
area planted in bananas.These data point to a significant degree of strati-
