Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Therefore, there is a good chance that yields on the Bay Islands were in
decline by the 1890s after ten, twenty, or even thirty years of continu-
ousproduction.Contemporariesrepeatedlylinkedassessmentsofsoilfer-
tility to economic conditions. Decades of cultivating the same crop in
a relatively small area depleted soil nutrients and in turn lowered fruit
weights, prompting shippers to purchase fruit from mainland growers
whoseyoung plantations yielded heavier fruit.Thus, the loss of soil nutri-
entsdidnotrenderagriculturalproductionimpossibleontheBayIslands,
but it lowered the economic viability of growing bananas in light of ex-
pandingproductiononthemainland.
37
Bytheturnofthecentury,banana
exports from Roatán had all but ceased; a 1903 observer noted that ''plan-
tain and banana plantations are yielding to the encroachment of under-
brush.''
38
Lessthan20yearsaftertheboom,theBayIslands'exportbanana
production had crashed.
It is doubtful that many growers on the Honduran mainland paused
long enough to consider the potential implications of the Bay Islands' de-
cline. The banana trade continued to expand following the turn of the
century. A 1901 report anticipated the creation of new banana farms in the
Sula valley and on the Leán coast where ''there still exist immense exten-
sions of virgin land appropriate for banana cultivation.''
39
The following
year, nearly 17,250 hectares of bananas yielded some 3.2 million bunches
40
Some 8,600 hectares of bananas were planted in the department of Cor-
tés. In the recently created department of Atlántida, growers had 5,520
hectares in production and new farms were ''forming constantly'' around
Tela, swiftly becoming one of the region's most important banana ports.
Exports from La Ceiba topped 2 million bunches in 1903; a local govern-
ment o
cial stated that bananas were the ''principal source of wealth.''
41
In 1905, exports from Honduras totaled 4.4 million bunches, a figure that
continued to rise in subsequent years.
42
By 1912 (theyear that United Fruit
acquired its first concessions in Honduras), the governor of Cortés esti-
mated that bananas occupied more than 24,000 hectares of land in that
province alone. Although the governor's estimate was probably inflated,
exportbananaproductionexpandedsignificantlybetween1899and1911.
43
The magnitude of human activity on the North Coast at the turn of
the century should not be overstated. The combined population of the
departments of Cortés and Colón was around 30,000 persons plus ''a con-
siderable floating population.''
44
The National Railroad, which ran some
sixty miles inland from Puerto Cortés to the town of Potrerillos (south
of San Pedro Sula), was the only significant railway in the region. Banana
growers relied primarily upon fluvial transportation networks to carry
