Little Girl

All the bad bananas

Plastic bags on the bananas

Chiquita is a Spanish word used to describe a little girl.
The Chiquita banana plantation that is in Costa Rica has been practicing to be more sustainable for four years with the Nature and Community Project. The Chiquita plantation has tall bushes around their plantation to keep pesticides inside the plantation. There are signs around the plantation that say keep out when they are spraying the pesticides. Chiquita uses harmful pesticides and the workers that have more contact with them have to get blood tests every three months to make sure they have proper levels. Unlike many other plantations in Costa Rica, Chiquita takes proper care of their workers and it is their number one priority to keep their workers safe from the pesticides. All workers are trained in appropriate agricultural practices, occupational safety and proper use of protective equipment.
How Chiquita packs their bananas: Banana stems arrive at the packing station where they are counted, weighed, and examined by quality inspectors. Plastic bags and twine are separated and compacted to be recycled. In the dehandling area, banana hands are cut off the stems and placed into water tanks. The fruit that meets Chiquita specifications is cut into clusters of four to eight bananas. Bananas with blemishes are processed into puree, and the rest is sent to organic waste composting trenches. The fruit is washed in water tanks for ten minutes to eliminate latex residues that can stain the fruit. Water that leaves the tanks passes through a solid waste trap, which prevents solids from reaching the water drainage systems. Clusters of bananas weighing a total of 18 kg (40 lbs), the equivalent of a box, are placed on trays where workers gently affix the Chiquita labels. The tray is passed through a final shower to seal the cuts and prevent crown rot. The fruit is packed and weighed. Boxes are placed on pallets and stamped with a traceability code. Recycled plastic strips protect the corners of the boxes. Plants are placed in containers, which are loaded into Chiquita´s great white fleet ships and transported to the various markets.
The Nature and Community Project is a joint effort by Chiquita, the Swiss retailer Migros, GTZ, Rainforest Alliance and the local community to preserve 100 hectares (250 acres) of rainforest, promote environmental awareness through education and provide additional income opportunities for the community. The Nogua Group is one of the small businesses created to generate income for this community. This group is the one that did a play presentation for us.
Chiquita employs 25,000 people and owns approximately 37,000 acres of banana farms in Panama, Costa Rica, Honduras and Guatemala. Workers in Chiquita farms enjoy higher living standards than other agricultural workers.
Although Chiquita is not 100% sustainable they are trying to make a better situation with what they are doing. The fertilizers they use are approved by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the European Union regulatory authorities. Since 2000, Chiquita in Costa Rica has achieved 100% Rainforest Alliance certification.
Another thing that Chiquita does to be more environmentally responsible is that is has protected land close to their plantation that is connected to other protected areas. It also has planted at least one million trees along rivers, lakes, roads, and residential areas.
With expanding liabilities, in the future Chiquita may be liable for destroying Costa Rica's environment from pesticides. Chiquita introduced bananas into an environment that cannot handle them so they force bananas to work by using pesticides which makes bananas a damaging plant.

Bananas Destroy Lowland Forests

Bananas are another major source of income and are now bringing in twice as much money as coffee. According to Culture Shock, "Costa Rica is the second biggest banana producer in the world after Ecuador."
Banana farming requires a lot of land to be profitable. Many lowland forests have been destroyed because bananas need flat and moist land. Bananas are native to Asia. Because bananas need a lot of land there aren't small family farmers who can sell their bananas worldwide. This led to the domination by big, foreign-owned companies with local workers.
Banana farming created too much water build up so they had to create irrigation systems. This helps spread the pesticides that are sprayed on the bananas into the rivers, which go to the ocean.
Plastic bags are put over the bananas because they need shade and to keep the bugs off. If they hadn't cut down all the tropical trees from the forest they may have had enough shade to please the bananas. Also, don't they use gross pesticides to kill off the bugs? Because bananas are native to Asia they are not used to the bugs and fungus in Costa Rica. This is why they have to use so many pesticides on the plants. The plastic bags used to be a big problem because they weren't recycled properly and drifted into the ocean. Today, there are better recycling programs and some of the bags are created to be biodegradable. More harmful pesticides cause cancer and sterilization.
Six months after the banana plant is planted a large flowering stem emerges which is where the fruit comes from. One stem contains between 120 to 150 bananas. The banana fruits are bagged about two weeks old. The bananas are ready to harvest about 12 weeks after bagging.
Trivia: the average person in the US eats more than 25 pounds of bananas each year.

Banana Herb

Thought to be a native plant of tropical Asia, the banana was introduced into the Caribbean and then to Central America and Costa Rica sometime after the Spanish invasion. The banana cultivating started in 1878 (the first 360 stems were shipped to New Orleans). Costa Rica became the first Central American nation to plant bananas.
According to banana.com the banana plant is not a tree, it’s actually the world's largest herb! Learn something new every day. Banana “trees” are mainly tall, upright, and fairly sturdy, but the main stem is called a pseudostem, literally meaning a “fake stem.” Each stem can produce a bunch of yellow, green, or even red bananas before dying and being replaced by another banana plant. Bananas are a valuable source of vitamin B6, vitamin c, and potassium.
In Costa Rica plantains are a popular fruit in their cuisine. A plantain is in the banana family but is cooked instead of eaten raw like the typical sweet banana. When the plantain has a green skin it has a texture similar to potatoes yet has much more starch. A fully ripened one has a sweet texture that crosses between a sweet potato and a regular banana.
Every day I have either plantains or bananas for breakfast, I don’t know which one is which yet. For lunch, I sometimes have fried plantains or banana chips. I like them both. By the end of the trip I will hopefully be able to tell the two apart.
In Costa Rica, ripe bananas from an entire bunch are peeled and boiled slowly for hours to make a thick syrup which is called "honey".

B-A-N-A-N-A-S!

Bananas were introduced into Costa Rica sometime after the Spanish invasion. According to Info Costa Rica website, in 1899, Tropical Trading and Transport Co. merged with the Boston Fruit Co. to form the United Fruit Co., which became a dominant force of the political economies of the "banana republic". Costa Rica is also known as the coffee republic as well. Today, Costa Rica´s main exports are not bananas or coffee anymore, but integrated circuits and modular circuits. As of 2005, Costa Rica produces 2.2 million metric tons of bananas. Costa Rica has Chiquita, Del Monte, Dole, and Fyffes.
There are banana trees around San Jose. We see them on the side of the road and there was even one in the back of a gift shop we went to that had a garden.
When we went to Cinde, the Costa Rican Investment Promotion Agency which is a private non-profit apolitical organization, they talked about how they are trying to get new investors to come to Costa Rica to products and export to other countries. I don´t have their PowerPoint that they are going to send to us that talked about the numbers involved in the industries including bananas and coffee.
I will have to research bananas more. I can´t seem to find a lot of information about them now.