Fair Bananas!: Farmers, Workers, and Consumers Strive to Change an Industry

by Henry J. Frundt

Overview

Bananas are the most-consumed fruit in the world. In the United States alone, the public eats about twenty-eight pounds of bananas per person every year. The total value of the international banana trade is nearly five billion dollars annually, with 80 percent of all exported bananas originating in Latin America. There are as many as ten million people involved in growing, packing, and shipping bananas, but American consumers have only recently begun to think about them and about their working conditions. Although European nations have helped create a “fair trade” system for bananas grown in Mediterranean and Caribbean regions, the United States as a country has not developed a similar system for bananas grown in Latin America, where large corporations have dominated trade for more than a century.

Fair Bananas! is one of the first books to examine the issue of “fair-trade bananas.” Specifically, Henry Frundt analyzes whether a farmer-worker-consumer alliance can collaborate to promote a fair-trade label for bananas—much like those for fair-trade coffee and chocolate—that will appeal to North American shoppers. Researching the issue for more than ten years, Henry Frundt has elicited surprising and nuanced insights from banana workers, Latin American labor officials, company representatives, and fair-trade advocates.

Frundt writes with admirable clarity throughout the book, which he has designed for college students who are being introduced to the subject of international trade and for consumers who are interested in issues of development. Frankly, though, Fair Bananas! will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about bananas, including where they come from and how they get from there to here.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816528363
Publisher:	University of Arizona Press
Publication date:	04/20/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Henry J. Frundt is a convener-emeritus of the Sociology faculty at Ramapo College, where he has been teaching for more than thirty-five years. Dr. Frundt’s previous publications include the award-winning Trade Conditions and Labor Rights: U.S. Initiatives, Dominican and Central American Responses, Refreshing Pauses: Coca Cola and Human Rights in Guatemala, and An Agribusiness Manual.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations vii

Acknowledgments ix

List of Acronyms xi

1 Introduction: Competing Meanings of Fairness 1

2 Corporate Banana Structures 14

3 The Fair Trade Alternative 30

4 Actors for Banana Development 48

5 Going Bananas as a Social Movement 57

6 The Persistent Banana Environment 70

7 Conundrums of the Banana Trade 83

8 Resilience of Banana Unions 97

9 Peasants of the Caribbean and Fairer Trade 117

10 The Chiquita Accord and Labor Responses 137

11 The New Banana-Marketing Strategies 156

12 Fair Trade and Freedom of Association 173

13 Dole: Reluctant Fairness 189

14 A Proposal for Fairer Trade 197

15 Toward a Sustainable Banana Alliance 206

Notes 223

Bibliography 245

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

A sophisticated analysis of what is happening with fair trade in bananas.” —Roger Burbach, author of Globalization and Postmodern Politics


“The book has much to say that is of significance as fair trade emerges as a possible alternative to existing patterns of world trade.” —Mark Moberg, author of Myths of Ethnicity and Nation: Immigration, Work, and Identity in the Belize Banana Industry

From the Publisher