Hopefully in May, we’ll be seeing more fair trade bananas in California. Oké USA, a new fair trade tropical fruit company, is slowly making its way west — and bringing bananas from Equador with them.
These fair trade, organic bananas come the El Guabo cooperative in Equador, which you can read about in this Boston Globe article. In Equador, some farmers get as little as 80 cents per 40-lb box of bananas. Fair trade bananas, in contrast, fetch $7.75 for the same box — even $9.50 for organic box.
Oke USA just launched in August 2006, with a grant from Oxfam America. It’s owned by AgroFair (European fair trade fruit company), Red Tomato (nonprofit that helps small US farmers get better prices from supermarkets), and the fair trade company Equal Exchange. But already, Oke’s shipping about 200,000 bananas a week — half of it into Twin Cities area, and half of it in the Northeast — and distributing them to co-ops and some college campuses. Dartmouth’s one of these campuses. There, student activists have succeeded in making all bananas sold on one campus location — called Home Plate — fair trade certified.
Over time, Oke plans to import fair-trade bananas from Coopetrabasur, a worker-co-op plantation in Costa Rica, then expand to import mangoes, pineapples, coconuts, and other tropical fruits.
Concerned that shipping bananas over long distances will do more harm than good? Jonathan Rosenthal, the top banana at Oké Banana, answers some difficult questions about bananas, global and local fair trade, and organics in this Grist Q & A.
Next up on bananas: John’s been quoted saying that Oké USA’s “challenging the cut-throat race to the bottom of the big banana companies.” However, big banana companies — such as Dole and Chiquita — have been getting a lot of press lately about the great enviro and labor-related changes they’ve made. Is it for real, or is it fluff? What banana’s an activist to eat?
Chiquita to Plead Guilty to Dealing With Terrorists
March 14 (Bloomberg) — Chiquita Brands International Inc., owner of the namesake banana brand, agreed to plead guilty to federal charges of doing business with terrorist groups in Colombia, in violation of federal law.
Prosecutors said Cincinnati-based Chiquita and eight unnamed company executives did business with United Self Defense Forces of Colombia, a “violent, right wing” organization designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department in 2001, according to criminal charges filed today in a Washington federal court.
Chiquita paid the group more than $1.7 million in at least 100 installments between 1997 and 2004, according to the charging documents. Payments continued even after the company was notified that the group was a designated terrorist organization, and after company lawyers warned Chiquita “must stop payments.”
Comment by Top Banana — March 14, 2007 @ 5:42 pm
The issues of social responsibility are very complex. Yes, these large companies are cleaning up their act in many ways. We applaud them for taking these steps. And, the global system that pushes them to maximize return to shareholders above all else often pressures them to act in less responsible ways.
Oké USA is a small company looking to be accountable to our owners—a group that include the farmers—in a way that values transparency, honesty and efficient transactions for the benefit of everyone.
Comment by Top Banana — March 14, 2007 @ 5:52 pm