Read Soluri, Banana Cultures, pp. 1-127 and 193-end.
For your blog post you may discuss the ways Soluri integrates agroecology, labor history, and medical history to explore the ways bananas transformed forests and people in Honduras.
Reading Banana Cultures, I found myself intrigued by the clean, elegant narrative strategies that historian John Soluri employs. The focus on farm-to-market allows him to trace the movement of bananas from production in the North Coast region of Honduras to consumption across the United States, capturing the complexities of both ends of the chain and ultimately showing (with unusual clarity) how consumer preferences can leave a devastating footprint on faraway cultures and ecosystems. The narrative also makes plain how consumer choices came to be circumscribed by middle men, that is, the giant fruit companies that played a decisive role in determining the specific qualities of the bright yellow bunches that ultimately materialized on U.S. supermarket shelves. Once United Fruit, Standard and others concluded that American consumers must have the Gros Michel (and later the Cavendish), they made it their business to deliver these products even when it meant propping up or undermining political regimes, putting the squeeze on workers or exposing them to dangerous pesticides, building their own transportation infrastructure, and clearing vast amounts of forest to stay ahead of disease.
The chronological sequencing employed by Soluri enables him to track changes over time, including new techniques of cultivation, distribution and marketing; shifting cultural perceptions and tastes; changing political regimes; and the destruction and conversion of vast stretches of forest to banana farms.
Another abiding theme developed in the narrative is the link between people, plants, and pathogens, which converged fatefully in the monoculture landscapes of Honduras. In tracing their interconnectedness, Soluri gives agency to human and non-human actors, begging the question of who or what was driving the action in this history. In many instances, “nature” appeared to have the last laugh, even if that laugh emanated from the ghostlike remains of a former tropical forest.
My favorite banana fact from this book: bananas are herbs, not trees.
Soluri used a variety of histories to explore the change that the banana industry made in the Honduras. He explores the economic drivers of the rise of banana farming, including the rise of banana consumption in the US, creating a huge market. I especially found it interesting that the banana ended up in the US as a dessert-fruit food, rather than as a starch-type food as in the Caribbean. I don't like bananas and had never given them any thought, so I had no idea how popular they were in the US, historically or currently.
As John discussed, Soluri makes it clear that middlemen can have huge effects. The agroecological story had a couple of interesting parts to me--I had already heard about the commercial banana supply being particularly suspectible to disease because they are essentially the same banana, but didn't know about the previous problem with Gros Michels and Panama disease. The large-scale deforestation of the Honduras for the sake of bananas had huge effects on the landscape, though Soluri makes special note that the Honduran landscape was varied enough, in terms of both physical geography and previous use, that not all landscape/biological diversity was wiped out for the sake of bananas.
I thought the interplay between the local people, workers, the government, and banana companies was also especially interesting; a good example is the village La Paz, where the people settled on the land owned by the railroad company, petitioned the Honduras government for titles to the land, and sold bananas to/wanted a railroad branch from Standard Fruit Company. There was also that case which I can't find in the book now, where the company was taking up the railroads, and the local people wanted in return a bridge over the waterway that was a much more significant barrier because of intervention for banana cultivation.
The medical and labor histories of the Honduras are also used to explain how the banana industry changed as it it did, and how medical and labor issues affected each other, one example being labor's lobbying against aerial spraying of fungicides on the grounds of worker health (and the lack of lobbying against ground spraying). Soluri also points out that the US environmental movement successfully obtained bans on pesticides that left significant residue, which meant those pesticides were sometimes replaced with ones which broke down in the environment faster and were also much more dangerous to the banana farm workers, highlighting how US culture/law, trying to protect its own citizens and environment, through the banana industry had serious negative but often unseen (in the US) effects on the lives of Honduran workers and their environment.
As the demand for bananas began to grow, Soluri integrates social, economic, political, and ecological history to explain how the Caribbean fruit became as popular as the apple in the USA in less than a century. In the introduction Soluri says that he is not going to focus on the specific politics, but instead focusing on the dynamics between growers and large fruit companies along with the social and economic changes following the fruit’s rise in popularity. Honduras was the leading export of bananas from until 1970.
The somewhat well known story of the large fruit companies coming and exploiting workers when possible and getting rights to develop infrastructure is told. But he also talks about how the large fruit companies did not destroy the non-company growers, at least not directly. I found it surprising that up until the mass outbreak of pathogens, non-company growers still made up about a third of the country’s exports. The small growers could not keep up with the expense of defending against the pathogens and many eventually became reliant on the big companies for help.
I appreciated Soluri’s incorporation of the social history of the fruit. Bananas are so ordinary to me that it’s difficult for me to see the ways bananas were and still are associated the “exotic” Caribbean. The racism associated with the fruit in popular media in the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the same sentiment that gave whites the idea that it was a near obligation to clear massive amounts of land for banana cultivation. Since the people in the Caribbean, were too lazy to extract the enormous amounts of capital from their land, white people must come in and do it.
I found it very interesting to read Soluri’s "Banana Cultures" following Dean’s "With Broadax and Firebrand"; as we discussed last week, Dean had a way of giving the Atlantic forests of Brazil a sort of agency, while Soluri’s perspective on the impacts of banana cultures on the natural world was a lot more complicated. The interplay between agroecological attributes of Honduras, the demand for bananas from North America (and subsequent political complications), the culture of Honduran producers, and (as John already noted) the pathogens resulting from intensive production were all significant contributors to how the history of the banana cultures panned out.
While I am no agroecologist, I would like to comment on a particularly shallow aspect of consumption that had disproportionate effects on the ecological impacts of banana production: the favoring of the Gros Michel cultivar by consumers. By Soluri’s account, it seems that it was the unblemished, evenly ripening outward appearance of the banana (rather than the taste or volume of “hands” per bunch) that determined whether or not they would be bought. Thus the drawbacks of the Gros Michel were overlooked. Soluri did not spend as much time lamenting ecological tragedies (like irreparable loss of biodiversity) as Dean did, but the continuous clearing of unblighted areas in order for the Gros Michel to stay a step ahead of Panama disease was certainly significant to the regional forest history. While I am sure that many other favored supermarket varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains have similar stories, the background story of the political and cultural ramifications of this one aesthetic whim of consumption really struck me.
One thing that I found very interesting about Soluri’s writing is that he is never overly pessimistic about the effects of banana culture on Honduras and other Central American countries. From the beginning I did not feel a sense of despair in his writing that you often find with other books about degradation. As others have alluded to, he does not make the large fruit companies out to be the devil, destroying everything and everyone in their paths to make a buck. He also does not exaggerate the effects of banana monocultures on the landscape. He agrees that like any other form of agriculture, natural terrain was lost, but he does not pretend that it ruined all of the forests and other varied ecosystems in Honduras.
I agree with Sam in that this book made me view banana’s differently. I have never really thought about the fact that bananas cannot be grown in the US. To me foods like banana bread seem as inherently American as apple pie. It is curious how a demand from an unthinking population can have such enormous effects on people and landscapes in the same hemisphere. As Erin pointed out, this same idea of only thinking about ones circumstances and not of others who are affected also played out with pesticides. Most American people never thought about how changing laws that would be better for them and their environment might harm others in other situations.
I also found Sam’s comment about the racism involved to be very interesting. Soluri talks about how even in the beginning before big banana companies came to Honduras, white people were criticizing Hondurans for leaving bananas to rot on the trees when there was no demand for them. They thought that the farmers should raise pigs with those bananas and that they were being lazy and wasteful by not doing so. They did not see how different cultures have different work ethics and that one of the main reasons that the Hondurans grew bananas in the first place is that they were relatively easy to grow.
I found Soluri’s “Banana Cultures” to be a very well researched account of the “boom and bust” production-consumption dynamic of the Banana plantation Industry primarily located on the North Coast of Honduras from the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. His extensive use of documentation, and detailed eye witness accounts with relevant figures helped shaped this strong chronological account of the environmental and social impacts this industry had on the people and landscape of this area.
This “exotic” fruit had humble beginnings; the plantations that existed were on a small to medium size, cultivated by local farmers and were part of a bio-diverse landscape of dense forests, wetlands and swamps, to open grassy plains used for raising cattle. However the introduction of bananas to the US consumers brought about a drastic change to the environment.
Big companies such as United Fruits and Cuyamel Fruits demanded that large areas of land be bought up, cleared and planted with thousands of hectares of Gros Michel banana plantations, at the same time under cutting the livelihoods of local farmers. Slave labour was used to hand dig canals and dikes for irrigation as well as swamp lands being drained so that flooding would move layers of silt to the area to produce more land for plantations. Hundreds of km’s of railroad tracks were laid across the land to move the produce from the farms to the docks to be exported.
The epidemic of the Panama disease laid waste to thousands of hectares of plantations, affecting the supply of good produce; although it was attempted to counter this problem with a different breed of bananas, this was unsuccessful. But what struck me was the fact that new rail ways were laid and new land was cleared to try and escape the disease spreading, however this had little success. I wonder whether the abuse of the virgin soils from over cultivating played some part in helping this disease spread as quickly and widely as it did.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned yet what I found to be the most disturbing facet of this well-written history of largescale production-consumer dynamics--that is, how the eradication of Sigatoka (and later diseases) literally turned "brains, beds and sweat" blue. The imagery of the Bordeaux applicator workers (and later oil-based spray workers) suffering in such cruel ways under the hand of strict managers under the hand of strict foreign managers under the hand of U.S. consumer demands, will stick with me for quite some time. Soluri writes that by the 1970s in fact, "virtually every phase of production--from plant propagation to boxing operations--involved chemical inputs" (195). This chemical dependence, effectively masked by popular media's "often incorporated images of production spaces that stressed both the fecundity of the land and the contentedness of the people who worked it," (218) seemed, in no ready way accessible to the American public to fathom.
It’s so hard for me to grasp how such an exotic fruit could enter daily American life so easily, with so few questions asked by the consumer. Had acknowledgement of this chemical dependence spread through popular U.S. media earlier, would dynamics have shifted? Granted, Soluri suggests this as a reason for optimism today—that the consumer is readily becoming more cognizant of purchases amidst a movement today which calls attention to “the relationship between food production, eating, environmental sustainability, and human health” (244). But really, it makes me question how many products are today’s banana—ill effects masked by popular media and taken for granted as a simple staple of an average U.S. diet, as “inherently American as apple pie,” as Mallory writes.
Like John, I was also interested in how Soluri set up the narrative in this book. In the early chapters he highlights the shift between what was happening in Honduras and the popular culture and culinary culture around bananas in the United States. This helped me to understand where the still prominent stereotype of Central American or latino laziness comes from. For me, this is one of the hardest stereotypes to understand because the immigrants from Central America and Mexico are actually working the hardest most laborious agricultural and factory jobs in the United States today. It is interesting that this stereotype could stem from the United States’ views on agriculture.
The US attitude is we need to “work” the land and make it perform in a productive manner no matter what crop is being grown. The United States has a history of forcing the land to produce at unhealthy levels. It was interesting that the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wasn’t mentioned in the book. I can see now how the mentality of farming before the Dust Bowl in the US would have been at odds with the Honduran farming practices. He writes, “The work of maintaining an agroecosystem based on perennial herbs such as plantains and permanent tree crops did not constitute a legitimate livelihood in the eyes of the North American archaeologist.” (p.35) Nor would it in the eyes of the average American who associates farming with vast open fields and soil to be worked. This notion of hard work causes trouble throughout the rest of the book as Honduras was then worked over with fungicides, herbicides and pesticides. Meanwhile, the only qualifiers for a good crop was how it looked and how big was the yield. This is still the issue with food production today.
In Banana Cultures, Soluri does a wonderful job of relaying historical evidence for his research to the reader in a well thought out and comprehensible manner. His work delves into the unfortunate reality of the produce section of the grocery store, focusing in on bananas. Bananas, being one of the cheapest, colorful, and widely accepted fruits, have more than 100 years of history in politics, economics, pathogens, and social impacts.
This historical work sheds light on consumerism in the US from the beginning of the 20th century through present. The displacement of production and consumption is evident when consumers thoughts of bananas rarely goes beyond which store has the cheapest prices or the biggest bananas. Admittedly, before this, I didn’t really know were bananas come from. I knew they came from the tropics, assumed a troubled production history, as is common with nearly all agricultural goods, and still I bought them without knowing much more. Never did I think of the history of slave labor, conversion of marshes, natural landscapes, mangroves and forests to monoculture banana plantations. The involvement of the large companies like United and others, their interactions with governments, and the competition with small scale local producers is not evident at 35 cents a pound. Even though I have learned about both plant and animal disease in the past, I never applied the concept to bananas. And all of this is not even getting into consumer preferences and the unseen consequences of producing what is in demand.
The role of railways, as noted by previous posters, was a very intriguing aspect of the book. Although trains increased the ability of mobility of ideas, products and people; the movements of things like diseases are usually an afterthought. Another interesting thing about the railroads was how they actually helped the non-company farmers get their bananas to port. Without knowing about banana history, I would have thought railways would have detrimentally affected the small producers.
Banana Cultures was an interesting read. It prompted me to consider that this is simply one industry, which makes me wonder how similar or different are the countless other food industries around the world in terms of the intensity of issues such as deforestation, land and soil degradation, mass production and transportation, social injustices, disease introduction and control, political disputes, etc. There is such host of aspects to consider for the production of one seemingly simple product, one that we consume without much of a thought.
The lack of thought about the banana production process was really apparent to me after reading about the diseases present on the banana plants and their methods of control. The workers who were spraying Bordeaux, and later other chemicals, were subject to respiratory diseases and poor working conditions. There were fears of death and disease among the workers, but the jobs were filled out of the greater fears of poverty. The diseases seemed to never cease, as time went on new diseases were discovered and spread, which led to more diverse disease control methods. This aspect of the banana is not one that is thought about here in America. What we have been exposed to here, rather, is the advertisement of quality, uses for cooking, and low cost of the banana. There is much more to the product than that!
Being in a forest history class, I was also prompted to think more about the deforestation of the region. It was mentioned, but not in much detail, mostly noting the resulting loss in biodiversity. I thought about how great of a role this deforestation played in the spread of diseases, how it affected soil erosion, and whether or not invasive species (and which ones) were more capable of proliferating because of the losses. The book also briefly mentioned indigenous people living in the forests, and I wondered their fate as the forested lands were pushed further from the coast?
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I will never look at bananas with the same simplicity as I have in the past.
Soluri presents the information and story in a very captivating way and shows the inter-relatedness (US consumerism, land tenure, both governments, individuals, physical characteristics of the land, etc) that writes the story of not only the banana, but also Honduran nationhood. We briefly discussed in class the kind of emotional differences between Soluri and Dean and I think this comes through in the cover and overall appearance of the book. Soluri has a “fun” cover and a very neutral title, while Dean comes at your with a book titled With Broadax and Firebrand with an image men cutting down a large tract of woods and fire. Dean does not back down from these assertions on the cover. Soluri only briefly talks directly of the ecological destruction, but the environmental lost really comes through when he discusses the various diseases that affected the plantations. Generally, the driving force for large out breaks of disease is the way that large corporate plantations function. The planting of the same varietal, closely together with poor soil quality, poor irrigation makes whole plantations susceptible to disease. New areas that were not infected with disease had to be cleared for plantations. Then chemicals had to be developed and sprayed onto the landscape, ultimately flowing and traveling wherever the water or wind might take it. The installation of infrastructure that went along with moving large quantities of the export banana also caused further environmental damage.
It is also very interesting and kind of shocking the power this yellow fruit had in the overthrow of government (granted during a politically unstable time). The economic holdings of the United Fruit Company in Honduras caused it to indirectly financially back the “invasion” of exiled and Ex-President Bonilla that lead to his re-election as President and the subsequent railroad concessions going to the United Fruit Company.
Fruit varietal history is pretty interesting. I recently watched Botany of Desire the film (have also read the book) where Michael Pollen discusses the apple and how a few varietals took hold because they were the biggest, juiciest, sweetest types and much like the banana, American consumerism demands the biggest and best. Learning about the Gros Michel varietal again brought up these ideas. The idea that a innocent ad campaign to persuade the consumption of bananas here in the United States can have all types of effects on economics, social, and political motives for a century or more in other nations, but specifically Honduras is pretty astounding and makes you think twice about the different products you consume.
As we found out through the activity in class today, the cultural, economic, and societal history of the banana is complex and can only be fully understood by looking at all three components concurrently. Soluri does a great job at intertwining all of these elements together in a non-partisan historical narrative that traces not only the banana’s influence for Honduran banana workers and coastal communities, but rather the larger market demand forces that were directly linked to land conversion practices and the host of problems this conversion evoked. Soluri makes the case for a whole host of factors, but the one that was the most poignant for me was the infiltration of the rail and road network to the otherwise “wild” forests with large trees and old-growth mahogany. As can be viewed within our own country, rail and transportation networks greatly expand the limits of consumption and consequently mass production in areas where agricultural commodities grow.
While reading this passage, I was reminded of Bill Cronon’s environmental history class where we learned about the VonThunen model of agricultural development that essentially seeks to explain the degree in which cities are linked to the proximal areas in which agricultural commodities are grown. VonThunen based this model off of pre-industrialized Europe, but in many ways it can also be linked to the story of the banana as well.
In the late 1800s the U.S. experienced a wave of technological innovations making transport of agricultural commodities inexpensive and highly efficient. These technologies were able to transcend internationally in the banana trade, namely through the large foreign-based companies that pushed for rail expansion, selective quality measures in shipping, as well as the introduction of ethylene gas that enabled the banana to ripen more quickly.
One striking aspect of the novel I did not anticipate was how preferential we are as American consumers! Soluri sums this up well by stating, “The failure of the 1929 marketing survey to generate any conversation about other varieties strongly suggests that many kinds of bananas cultivated in the tropics did not exist-at least not as commodifiable things- in the minds of most consumers.” (69) This is not surprising looking at today’s supermarket yet what do other varieties taste like? It was humoring and astonishing to hear about how Americans initially adopted the banana not by itself, but by masking its true flavor with milk, lots of sugar, and ham?! After reading this novel, I yearn to know what other varieties must taste like. Trip to the tropics anyone?
I'm really glad that you chose a book that connects world forest history/unsustainable and unhealthy land tenure to the United States (food) consumer. I have explored this topic in many of my classes and wasn't surprised by all of the political and social drama surrounding pesticide/herbicide usage that Soluri describes in Banana Cultures. Although it wasn't surprising to read passages like the one that Stevie mentioned ("brains, beds, sweat blue"), it will always ache my heart to know that many agricultural workers around the world have suffered and will suffer the sometimes freakish and abrupt consequences that certain pesticides can impose on someone's life.
I'd like to comment once again about Stevie's post. She mentions "It's so hard for me to grasp how such an exotic fruit could enter daily American life so easily, with so few questions asked by the consumer." I just wanted to note that many of the produce that Americans eat today have very complex and alarming pasts (and present...s) whether they have actually been grown in America or not. That's why there's a big movement to eat locally and try to better understand how your food got to your plate (who/what it affected along the way-Stevie also noted Soluri's acknowledgment that there is hope for change in the future). Although that movement tends to focus more heavily on climate change issues, its roots are based in values like forest conservation/sustainability and proper use of fertilizers/pesticides.
When I first learned about all of the interconnection between the staple foods that we Americans love and how it has had and is having a global effect on other people and the environment, it kind of overwhelmed me too. Chemical introduction and dependence continues today, so I hope that reading this book has convinced people that it's not just bananas that we should acknowledge as important, but every consumption choice we make.
Last Friday, I volunteered at a CSA with a couple students from Professor Kloppenburg’s Environmental Studies 112 class. While there another student I were digging up carrots and discussing how we, as Americans, view fresh vegetable and fruit product quality. The carrots we picked were oddly shaped and multiple sizes, nothing like we would find in a grocery store. This led into a discussion about how our perceptions of fresh produce “quality” shape the way vegetables and fruits are grown.
Over the weekend, I finished the Banana Cultures readings and was drawn to the final chapter, particularly the section entitled, “Selective Tastes: The Evolution of Quality Standards.” Annie discussed how the outward appearance of the banana was the deciding factor on whether it would be bought. I have to say outward appearance is the way I choose my fruits and vegetables at a supermarket and I wonder why I choose this way. One quote that struck from Soluri, “In addition to transporting and physically transforming plant materials into desired commodities, shippers and processors also developed discourses about “quality” as part of an effort to standardize production processes.”
This led me to banana markets in the U.S. and the desire for a specific banana quality that has led to one type of banana present for consumers, first Gros Michel and then Cavendish bananas. With more education on expanding specialty markets, it would seem beneficial to start a specialty banana market in the U.S. Perhaps if people were exposed to more varieties and educated about the benefits, they may find they prefer a different type. If a larger variety were grown in the tropics, rather than just monocultures of Cavendish, I would assume the soil, plant and worker health would improve. The history of pathogens in the region should teach us about the susceptibility of only one type of banana, a monoculture.
Reading Banana Cultures, I found myself intrigued by the clean, elegant narrative strategies that historian John Soluri employs. The focus on farm-to-market allows him to trace the movement of bananas from production in the North Coast region of Honduras to consumption across the United States, capturing the complexities of both ends of the chain and ultimately showing (with unusual clarity) how consumer preferences can leave a devastating footprint on faraway cultures and ecosystems. The narrative also makes plain how consumer choices came to be circumscribed by middle men, that is, the giant fruit companies that played a decisive role in determining the specific qualities of the bright yellow bunches that ultimately materialized on U.S. supermarket shelves. Once United Fruit, Standard and others concluded that American consumers must have the Gros Michel (and later the Cavendish), they made it their business to deliver these products even when it meant propping up or undermining political regimes, putting the squeeze on workers or exposing them to dangerous pesticides, building their own transportation infrastructure, and clearing vast amounts of forest to stay ahead of disease.
ReplyDeleteThe chronological sequencing employed by Soluri enables him to track changes over time, including new techniques of cultivation, distribution and marketing; shifting cultural perceptions and tastes; changing political regimes; and the destruction and conversion of vast stretches of forest to banana farms.
Another abiding theme developed in the narrative is the link between people, plants, and pathogens, which converged fatefully in the monoculture landscapes of Honduras. In tracing their interconnectedness, Soluri gives agency to human and non-human actors, begging the question of who or what was driving the action in this history. In many instances, “nature” appeared to have the last laugh, even if that laugh emanated from the ghostlike remains of a former tropical forest.
-John
My favorite banana fact from this book: bananas are herbs, not trees.
ReplyDeleteSoluri used a variety of histories to explore the change that the banana industry made in the Honduras. He explores the economic drivers of the rise of banana farming, including the rise of banana consumption in the US, creating a huge market. I especially found it interesting that the banana ended up in the US as a dessert-fruit food, rather than as a starch-type food as in the Caribbean. I don't like bananas and had never given them any thought, so I had no idea how popular they were in the US, historically or currently.
As John discussed, Soluri makes it clear that middlemen can have huge effects. The agroecological story had a couple of interesting parts to me--I had already heard about the commercial banana supply being particularly suspectible to disease because they are essentially the same banana, but didn't know about the previous problem with Gros Michels and Panama disease. The large-scale deforestation of the Honduras for the sake of bananas had huge effects on the landscape, though Soluri makes special note that the Honduran landscape was varied enough, in terms of both physical geography and previous use, that not all landscape/biological diversity was wiped out for the sake of bananas.
I thought the interplay between the local people, workers, the government, and banana companies was also especially interesting; a good example is the village La Paz, where the people settled on the land owned by the railroad company, petitioned the Honduras government for titles to the land, and sold bananas to/wanted a railroad branch from Standard Fruit Company. There was also that case which I can't find in the book now, where the company was taking up the railroads, and the local people wanted in return a bridge over the waterway that was a much more significant barrier because of intervention for banana cultivation.
The medical and labor histories of the Honduras are also used to explain how the banana industry changed as it it did, and how medical and labor issues affected each other, one example being labor's lobbying against aerial spraying of fungicides on the grounds of worker health (and the lack of lobbying against ground spraying). Soluri also points out that the US environmental movement successfully obtained bans on pesticides that left significant residue, which meant those pesticides were sometimes replaced with ones which broke down in the environment faster and were also much more dangerous to the banana farm workers, highlighting how US culture/law, trying to protect its own citizens and environment, through the banana industry had serious negative but often unseen (in the US) effects on the lives of Honduran workers and their environment.
--Erin
As the demand for bananas began to grow, Soluri integrates social, economic, political, and ecological history to explain how the Caribbean fruit became as popular as the apple in the USA in less than a century. In the introduction Soluri says that he is not going to focus on the specific politics, but instead focusing on the dynamics between growers and large fruit companies along with the social and economic changes following the fruit’s rise in popularity. Honduras was the leading export of bananas from until 1970.
ReplyDeleteThe somewhat well known story of the large fruit companies coming and exploiting workers when possible and getting rights to develop infrastructure is told. But he also talks about how the large fruit companies did not destroy the non-company growers, at least not directly. I found it surprising that up until the mass outbreak of pathogens, non-company growers still made up about a third of the country’s exports. The small growers could not keep up with the expense of defending against the pathogens and many eventually became reliant on the big companies for help.
I appreciated Soluri’s incorporation of the social history of the fruit. Bananas are so ordinary to me that it’s difficult for me to see the ways bananas were and still are associated the “exotic” Caribbean. The racism associated with the fruit in popular media in the USA in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the same sentiment that gave whites the idea that it was a near obligation to clear massive amounts of land for banana cultivation. Since the people in the Caribbean, were too lazy to extract the enormous amounts of capital from their land, white people must come in and do it.
Sam
3/28/11
I found it very interesting to read Soluri’s "Banana Cultures" following Dean’s "With Broadax and Firebrand"; as we discussed last week, Dean had a way of giving the Atlantic forests of Brazil a sort of agency, while Soluri’s perspective on the impacts of banana cultures on the natural world was a lot more complicated. The interplay between agroecological attributes of Honduras, the demand for bananas from North America (and subsequent political complications), the culture of Honduran producers, and (as John already noted) the pathogens resulting from intensive production were all significant contributors to how the history of the banana cultures panned out.
ReplyDeleteWhile I am no agroecologist, I would like to comment on a particularly shallow aspect of consumption that had disproportionate effects on the ecological impacts of banana production: the favoring of the Gros Michel cultivar by consumers. By Soluri’s account, it seems that it was the unblemished, evenly ripening outward appearance of the banana (rather than the taste or volume of “hands” per bunch) that determined whether or not they would be bought. Thus the drawbacks of the Gros Michel were overlooked. Soluri did not spend as much time lamenting ecological tragedies (like irreparable loss of biodiversity) as Dean did, but the continuous clearing of unblighted areas in order for the Gros Michel to stay a step ahead of Panama disease was certainly significant to the regional forest history. While I am sure that many other favored supermarket varieties of fruits, vegetables, and grains have similar stories, the background story of the political and cultural ramifications of this one aesthetic whim of consumption really struck me.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I found very interesting about Soluri’s writing is that he is never overly pessimistic about the effects of banana culture on Honduras and other Central American countries. From the beginning I did not feel a sense of despair in his writing that you often find with other books about degradation. As others have alluded to, he does not make the large fruit companies out to be the devil, destroying everything and everyone in their paths to make a buck. He also does not exaggerate the effects of banana monocultures on the landscape. He agrees that like any other form of agriculture, natural terrain was lost, but he does not pretend that it ruined all of the forests and other varied ecosystems in Honduras.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Sam in that this book made me view banana’s differently. I have never really thought about the fact that bananas cannot be grown in the US. To me foods like banana bread seem as inherently American as apple pie. It is curious how a demand from an unthinking population can have such enormous effects on people and landscapes in the same hemisphere. As Erin pointed out, this same idea of only thinking about ones circumstances and not of others who are affected also played out with pesticides. Most American people never thought about how changing laws that would be better for them and their environment might harm others in other situations.
I also found Sam’s comment about the racism involved to be very interesting. Soluri talks about how even in the beginning before big banana companies came to Honduras, white people were criticizing Hondurans for leaving bananas to rot on the trees when there was no demand for them. They thought that the farmers should raise pigs with those bananas and that they were being lazy and wasteful by not doing so. They did not see how different cultures have different work ethics and that one of the main reasons that the Hondurans grew bananas in the first place is that they were relatively easy to grow.
-Mallory
I found Soluri’s “Banana Cultures” to be a very well researched account of the “boom and bust” production-consumption dynamic of the Banana plantation Industry primarily located on the North Coast of Honduras from the late 19th century and well into the 20th century. His extensive use of documentation, and detailed eye witness accounts with relevant figures helped shaped this strong chronological account of the environmental and social impacts this industry had on the people and landscape of this area.
ReplyDeleteThis “exotic” fruit had humble beginnings; the plantations that existed were on a small to medium size, cultivated by local farmers and were part of a bio-diverse landscape of dense forests, wetlands and swamps, to open grassy plains used for raising cattle. However the introduction of bananas to the US consumers brought about a drastic change to the environment.
Big companies such as United Fruits and Cuyamel Fruits demanded that large areas of land be bought up, cleared and planted with thousands of hectares of Gros Michel banana plantations, at the same time under cutting the livelihoods of local farmers. Slave labour was used to hand dig canals and dikes for irrigation as well as swamp lands being drained so that flooding would move layers of silt to the area to produce more land for plantations. Hundreds of km’s of railroad tracks were laid across the land to move the produce from the farms to the docks to be exported.
The epidemic of the Panama disease laid waste to thousands of hectares of plantations, affecting the supply of good produce; although it was attempted to counter this problem with a different breed of bananas, this was unsuccessful. But what struck me was the fact that new rail ways were laid and new land was cleared to try and escape the disease spreading, however this had little success. I wonder whether the abuse of the virgin soils from over cultivating played some part in helping this disease spread as quickly and widely as it did.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned yet what I found to be the most disturbing facet of this well-written history of largescale production-consumer dynamics--that is, how the eradication of Sigatoka (and later diseases) literally turned "brains, beds and sweat" blue. The imagery of the Bordeaux applicator workers (and later oil-based spray workers) suffering in such cruel ways under the hand of strict managers under the hand of strict foreign managers under the hand of U.S. consumer demands, will stick with me for quite some time. Soluri writes that by the 1970s in fact, "virtually every phase of production--from plant propagation to boxing operations--involved chemical inputs" (195). This chemical dependence, effectively masked by popular media's "often incorporated images of production spaces that stressed both the fecundity of the land and the contentedness of the people who worked it," (218) seemed, in no ready way accessible to the American public to fathom.
ReplyDeleteIt’s so hard for me to grasp how such an exotic fruit could enter daily American life so easily, with so few questions asked by the consumer. Had acknowledgement of this chemical dependence spread through popular U.S. media earlier, would dynamics have shifted? Granted, Soluri suggests this as a reason for optimism today—that the consumer is readily becoming more cognizant of purchases amidst a movement today which calls attention to “the relationship between food production, eating, environmental sustainability, and human health” (244). But really, it makes me question how many products are today’s banana—ill effects masked by popular media and taken for granted as a simple staple of an average U.S. diet, as “inherently American as apple pie,” as Mallory writes.
-Stevie
Like John, I was also interested in how Soluri set up the narrative in this book. In the early chapters he highlights the shift between what was happening in Honduras and the popular culture and culinary culture around bananas in the United States. This helped me to understand where the still prominent stereotype of Central American or latino laziness comes from. For me, this is one of the hardest stereotypes to understand because the immigrants from Central America and Mexico are actually working the hardest most laborious agricultural and factory jobs in the United States today. It is interesting that this stereotype could stem from the United States’ views on agriculture.
ReplyDeleteThe US attitude is we need to “work” the land and make it perform in a productive manner no matter what crop is being grown. The United States has a history of forcing the land to produce at unhealthy levels. It was interesting that the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl wasn’t mentioned in the book. I can see now how the mentality of farming before the Dust Bowl in the US would have been at odds with the Honduran farming practices. He writes, “The work of maintaining an agroecosystem based on perennial herbs such as plantains and permanent tree crops did not constitute a legitimate livelihood in the eyes of the North American archaeologist.” (p.35) Nor would it in the eyes of the average American who associates farming with vast open fields and soil to be worked. This notion of hard work causes trouble throughout the rest of the book as Honduras was then worked over with fungicides, herbicides and pesticides. Meanwhile, the only qualifiers for a good crop was how it looked and how big was the yield. This is still the issue with food production today.
In Banana Cultures, Soluri does a wonderful job of relaying historical evidence for his research to the reader in a well thought out and comprehensible manner. His work delves into the unfortunate reality of the produce section of the grocery store, focusing in on bananas. Bananas, being one of the cheapest, colorful, and widely accepted fruits, have more than 100 years of history in politics, economics, pathogens, and social impacts.
ReplyDeleteThis historical work sheds light on consumerism in the US from the beginning of the 20th century through present. The displacement of production and consumption is evident when consumers thoughts of bananas rarely goes beyond which store has the cheapest prices or the biggest bananas. Admittedly, before this, I didn’t really know were bananas come from. I knew they came from the tropics, assumed a troubled production history, as is common with nearly all agricultural goods, and still I bought them without knowing much more. Never did I think of the history of slave labor, conversion of marshes, natural landscapes, mangroves and forests to monoculture banana plantations. The involvement of the large companies like United and others, their interactions with governments, and the competition with small scale local producers is not evident at 35 cents a pound. Even though I have learned about both plant and animal disease in the past, I never applied the concept to bananas. And all of this is not even getting into consumer preferences and the unseen consequences of producing what is in demand.
The role of railways, as noted by previous posters, was a very intriguing aspect of the book. Although trains increased the ability of mobility of ideas, products and people; the movements of things like diseases are usually an afterthought. Another interesting thing about the railroads was how they actually helped the non-company farmers get their bananas to port. Without knowing about banana history, I would have thought railways would have detrimentally affected the small producers.
-Cory
Banana Cultures was an interesting read. It prompted me to consider that this is simply one industry, which makes me wonder how similar or different are the countless other food industries around the world in terms of the intensity of issues such as deforestation, land and soil degradation, mass production and transportation, social injustices, disease introduction and control, political disputes, etc. There is such host of aspects to consider for the production of one seemingly simple product, one that we consume without much of a thought.
ReplyDeleteThe lack of thought about the banana production process was really apparent to me after reading about the diseases present on the banana plants and their methods of control. The workers who were spraying Bordeaux, and later other chemicals, were subject to respiratory diseases and poor working conditions. There were fears of death and disease among the workers, but the jobs were filled out of the greater fears of poverty. The diseases seemed to never cease, as time went on new diseases were discovered and spread, which led to more diverse disease control methods. This aspect of the banana is not one that is thought about here in America. What we have been exposed to here, rather, is the advertisement of quality, uses for cooking, and low cost of the banana. There is much more to the product than that!
Being in a forest history class, I was also prompted to think more about the deforestation of the region. It was mentioned, but not in much detail, mostly noting the resulting loss in biodiversity. I thought about how great of a role this deforestation played in the spread of diseases, how it affected soil erosion, and whether or not invasive species (and which ones) were more capable of proliferating because of the losses. The book also briefly mentioned indigenous people living in the forests, and I wondered their fate as the forested lands were pushed further from the coast?
Overall, I enjoyed the book, and I will never look at bananas with the same simplicity as I have in the past.
-Amanda
Soluri presents the information and story in a very captivating way and shows the inter-relatedness (US consumerism, land tenure, both governments, individuals, physical characteristics of the land, etc) that writes the story of not only the banana, but also Honduran nationhood. We briefly discussed in class the kind of emotional differences between Soluri and Dean and I think this comes through in the cover and overall appearance of the book. Soluri has a “fun” cover and a very neutral title, while Dean comes at your with a book titled With Broadax and Firebrand with an image men cutting down a large tract of woods and fire. Dean does not back down from these assertions on the cover. Soluri only briefly talks directly of the ecological destruction, but the environmental lost really comes through when he discusses the various diseases that affected the plantations. Generally, the driving force for large out breaks of disease is the way that large corporate plantations function. The planting of the same varietal, closely together with poor soil quality, poor irrigation makes whole plantations susceptible to disease. New areas that were not infected with disease had to be cleared for plantations. Then chemicals had to be developed and sprayed onto the landscape, ultimately flowing and traveling wherever the water or wind might take it. The installation of infrastructure that went along with moving large quantities of the export banana also caused further environmental damage.
ReplyDeleteIt is also very interesting and kind of shocking the power this yellow fruit had in the overthrow of government (granted during a politically unstable time). The economic holdings of the United Fruit Company in Honduras caused it to indirectly financially back the “invasion” of exiled and Ex-President Bonilla that lead to his re-election as President and the subsequent railroad concessions going to the United Fruit Company.
Fruit varietal history is pretty interesting. I recently watched Botany of Desire the film (have also read the book) where Michael Pollen discusses the apple and how a few varietals took hold because they were the biggest, juiciest, sweetest types and much like the banana, American consumerism demands the biggest and best. Learning about the Gros Michel varietal again brought up these ideas. The idea that a innocent ad campaign to persuade the consumption of bananas here in the United States can have all types of effects on economics, social, and political motives for a century or more in other nations, but specifically Honduras is pretty astounding and makes you think twice about the different products you consume.
-Matt
As we found out through the activity in class today, the cultural, economic, and societal history of the banana is complex and can only be fully understood by looking at all three components concurrently. Soluri does a great job at intertwining all of these elements together in a non-partisan historical narrative that traces not only the banana’s influence for Honduran banana workers and coastal communities, but rather the larger market demand forces that were directly linked to land conversion practices and the host of problems this conversion evoked. Soluri makes the case for a whole host of factors, but the one that was the most poignant for me was the infiltration of the rail and road network to the otherwise “wild” forests with large trees and old-growth mahogany. As can be viewed within our own country, rail and transportation networks greatly expand the limits of consumption and consequently mass production in areas where agricultural commodities grow.
ReplyDeleteWhile reading this passage, I was reminded of Bill Cronon’s environmental history class where we learned about the VonThunen model of agricultural development that essentially seeks to explain the degree in which cities are linked to the proximal areas in which agricultural commodities are grown. VonThunen based this model off of pre-industrialized Europe, but in many ways it can also be linked to the story of the banana as well.
In the late 1800s the U.S. experienced a wave of technological innovations making transport of agricultural commodities inexpensive and highly efficient. These technologies were able to transcend internationally in the banana trade, namely through the large foreign-based companies that pushed for rail expansion, selective quality measures in shipping, as well as the introduction of ethylene gas that enabled the banana to ripen more quickly.
One striking aspect of the novel I did not anticipate was how preferential we are as American consumers! Soluri sums this up well by stating, “The failure of the 1929 marketing survey to generate any conversation about other varieties strongly suggests that many kinds of bananas cultivated in the tropics did not exist-at least not as commodifiable things- in the minds of most consumers.” (69) This is not surprising looking at today’s supermarket yet what do other varieties taste like? It was humoring and astonishing to hear about how Americans initially adopted the banana not by itself, but by masking its true flavor with milk, lots of sugar, and ham?! After reading this novel, I yearn to know what other varieties must taste like. Trip to the tropics anyone?
Jo
I'm really glad that you chose a book that connects world forest history/unsustainable and unhealthy land tenure to the United States (food) consumer. I have explored this topic in many of my classes and wasn't surprised by all of the political and social drama surrounding pesticide/herbicide usage that Soluri describes in Banana Cultures. Although it wasn't surprising to read passages like the one that Stevie mentioned ("brains, beds, sweat blue"), it will always ache my heart to know that many agricultural workers around the world have suffered and will suffer the sometimes freakish and abrupt consequences that certain pesticides can impose on someone's life.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to comment once again about Stevie's post. She mentions "It's so hard for me to grasp how such an exotic fruit could enter daily American life so easily, with so few questions asked by the consumer." I just wanted to note that many of the produce that Americans eat today have very complex and alarming pasts (and present...s) whether they have actually been grown in America or not. That's why there's a big movement to eat locally and try to better understand how your food got to your plate (who/what it affected along the way-Stevie also noted Soluri's acknowledgment that there is hope for change in the future). Although that movement tends to focus more heavily on climate change issues, its roots are based in values like forest conservation/sustainability and proper use of fertilizers/pesticides.
When I first learned about all of the interconnection between the staple foods that we Americans love and how it has had and is having a global effect on other people and the environment, it kind of overwhelmed me too. Chemical introduction and dependence continues today, so I hope that reading this book has convinced people that it's not just bananas that we should acknowledge as important, but every consumption choice we make.
Last Friday, I volunteered at a CSA with a couple students from Professor Kloppenburg’s Environmental Studies 112 class. While there another student I were digging up carrots and discussing how we, as Americans, view fresh vegetable and fruit product quality. The carrots we picked were oddly shaped and multiple sizes, nothing like we would find in a grocery store. This led into a discussion about how our perceptions of fresh produce “quality” shape the way vegetables and fruits are grown.
ReplyDeleteOver the weekend, I finished the Banana Cultures readings and was drawn to the final chapter, particularly the section entitled, “Selective Tastes: The Evolution of Quality Standards.” Annie discussed how the outward appearance of the banana was the deciding factor on whether it would be bought. I have to say outward appearance is the way I choose my fruits and vegetables at a supermarket and I wonder why I choose this way. One quote that struck from Soluri, “In addition to transporting and physically transforming plant materials into desired commodities, shippers and processors also developed discourses about “quality” as part of an effort to standardize production processes.”
This led me to banana markets in the U.S. and the desire for a specific banana quality that has led to one type of banana present for consumers, first Gros Michel and then Cavendish bananas. With more education on expanding specialty markets, it would seem beneficial to start a specialty banana market in the U.S. Perhaps if people were exposed to more varieties and educated about the benefits, they may find they prefer a different type. If a larger variety were grown in the tropics, rather than just monocultures of Cavendish, I would assume the soil, plant and worker health would improve. The history of pathogens in the region should teach us about the susceptibility of only one type of banana, a monoculture.
-Hanna Engevold