Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 8.8  Banana plantations can cover hundreds, sometimes thousands of hectares. They are
mainly located on rich well drained alluvial soils. Packing sheds are often centrally located. (Photo
courtesy MacKay family)
and only 4 were of significant size. United Fruit Company (UFC), the first of the
large transnational banana companies, was incorporated in 1899 which marked the
beginning of a new era that converted the highly perishable tropical banana into
an important item of world trade. UFC was the first truly vertically integrated fruit
company having large production in widely separated localities, control of dedi-
cated shipping assets, expertise in fruit transportation methods, a marketing organ-
isation and sufficient capital to develop new production and marketing areas (Roche
2000 ). Thus, bananas for export took on the many qualities and attributes of planta-
tion horticulture, mostly corporately-owned large estates (Fig. 8.8 ), especially in
the tropics, employing cheap labour on a large scale, monoculture cropping, and
producing for sale in distant markets. These ingredients laid the foundation for ba-
nanas, little known in the western world 150 years ago, to become the major fresh
fruit in temperate zones where they are not grown.
Laying the Foundations for Plantation Profitability
Banana plantations were at the forefront of industrialised horticulture and the
characteristics of these plantations have everything to do with the drive for profit-
ability. To produce the required fruit quality at the cheapest price, the large trans-
national companies and smaller national growers alike employ the following mix
of strategies:-
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