Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

This is not meant to be the Chiquita blog, but...

You really can't help it when you see stuff like this. What does this mean? I can't tell, because - and this is another news flash - Chiquita has redesigned its website so that it de-emphasizes bananas - and made it unnavigable in the process (I tried to find some kind of marketing info on the sticker. No luck.) But even weirder, given the company's recent history of terrorist payoffs in Colombia - money which went directly for arms purchases - is the slogan itself. Fights for you? Does anybody at the banana giant's corporate headquarters think about this stuff?

I would love to see some normal news come out of Chiquita - but there doesn't seem to be much, other than an announcement of increased profits thanks to higher banana prices in the first quarter of this year.

Chiquita's bad news leads to a bigger question. As I noted in the post before this one, Dole and Del Monte have also now been accused of paying protection money in Colombia. But it is Chiquita that is getting hammered in the media. I wonder if the company regrets going public. Probably. But the reason it is getting the beat down it is now receiving - in my view - is not because it went public. The reason is that it went public only halfway. Watch the 60 Minutes interview again, if you haven’t already. Chiquita CEO Aguirre is ducking and covering. He's pretending to take responsibility while not taking responsibility. The company is getting hit because it is claiming to have done the right thing when it clearly didn't, and that leads to the suspicion that it went public not because it felt that it was ethical, but because bad stuff was coming down the pike, and it needed some quick cover.

Have Banana Prices Gone Insane?

Flooding in Ecuador - the world's largest exporter of bananas - have raised prices of what is traditionally the cheapest fruit in the supermarket. Since January, 2008 - if you buy bananas, you've certainly noticed this - prices have gone way up: in Los Angeles, from about 59 cents to as much as 79 cents a pound.

So far, the largest Ecuadorean banana company - Bonita - has made no statement on the crisis, and banana sales have remained strong - but flat - because the fruit remains the lowest-priced on store shelves. But the situation is an illustration of how fragile the banana market is; if disease should strike Latin America, prices will go up far more than the floods have prompted them to, and for the first time in over a century, apples (which now cost between about a dollar and three dollars a pound) could once again be a better value than the world's favorite fruit.

Despite the troubles, former Ecuadorean presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa remains the richest man in his country, and child labor laws there remain weak. Pressure to keep banana prices down in the face of the flooding crisis will likely affect neither.

This ninny says bananas disprove evolution...

This fellow, Ray Comfort, is using a banana to prove that a "designer" created the universe. The general idea is that only an intelligent force could have created such a naturally convenient item (with a protective wrapper, an easy-to-use "pull tab," perfect shape, etc.) There is so much stupid about this that it would be laughable, if so many people didn't fall for it. The reality, simply put, is that the banana is so "perfect" for human consumption because we've spent seven millennia - longer than just about any other crop - cultivating it to be so. In other words, since we've selected and reselected the best bananas, finally arriving at the one we eat today, the fruit - rather than proving that an unseen hand created it - tells us the opposite: we're the ones who made it what it is, and we used the tools of evolution to do so.

Oh, and also, the other guy in the video is washed-up child star Kirk Cameron, of "Growing Pains." Crediblity achieved.

Watch the video...if you want to read more about Comfort, or the Athiest Test, click below (you'll also find out why peanut butter contains yet another proof of a willful creator of the universe...)

More Chiquita Trouble in Colombia

Last year, Chiquita paid a $25 million fine after admitting supporting terrorist groups in Colombia during 1990s and the early part of this decade. This week, the world's largest banana company was sued by the families of five Florida missionaries killed by the AUC - the right-wing terror faction that the banana company was paid the money to. Three of the missionaries - David Mankins, Mark Rich, and Rick Tenenof - were kidnapped in 1993 and never seen again; they were declared dead nine years later. Steve Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke, also of the New Tribes Mission, were abducted and killed by the AUC in 1994.

A lawyer for the families said that the news of Chiquita's protection payments "started the ball rolling" on the suits, arguing that the money enabled the AUC to arm itself and expand activities. A Chiquita spokesperson called the allegation "absolutely untrue."

In an analysis on the Family Security Matters website, Douglas Farah writes:

"Wow. And now we have evidence the FARC is kidnapping people, producing cocaine and building front companies. A sad and bloody story that will not end soon, and is dragged on by companies like Chiquita who place their business ventures with terrorists above human life."

Strong words, but hard to argue, given the millions of dollars Chiquita gave to the drug-running, murdering AUC (not my opinion; the U.S. Department of Justice, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, says so) just to bolster banana sales (after all, "protecting employees" meant maintaining a presence in the country - Chiquita could have shut down all Colombia operations.)

Dozens of Americans were killed by guerilla and terrorist groups in Colombia during the time Chiquita was paying the so-called protection money. If the New Tribes suit is successful, look for a run on the courts.

Links:

Orlando Sentinel story

New Tribes Mission

Family Security Matters

Sticker image from Becky Martz's fabulous collection

Part one: Philippines...love, flavor, bananas, and war

The "La Ba" banana variety: "Big, aromatic, and deliciously sweet," according to the "Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers of Vietnam" website.

The most delicious bananas in the world - arguably - come from the Philippines. One, the "La Ba" banana, is native to Lam Dong province, where it is grown across a scant 100 hectares (about 250 acres) of cultivated land. In a story that originally appeared in the Thanhniem News , farmers reported that selling La Ba (described as "treasured for their large size, beautiful shape, and excellent taste") could fetch as much as eight times more than other crops grown across similar expanses of land.

Part two: Philippines...love, flavor, bananas, and war

Read Part One

A plantation building burns in the Compostela Valley, Philippines. Photo from Fresh Plaza.

Meanwhile, in the Compostela Valley on the Philippine island of Mindanao - Cavendish is grown there - 150 uniformed, armed members of the New People's Army revolutionary group ransacked a pair of banana plantations, destroying hundreds of acres of fruit, and killing one plantation official.

Chiquita sued for aiding Colombia torture

The world's largest banana company admitted to supplying payoffs to United Self Defense of Colombia, a U.S State Departments designated terrorist group that Forbes magazine descried as being responsible for "kidnapping, torture, disappearance, rape, murder, beatings, extortion, and drug trafficking."

The payments, which totalled $1.4 million, occurred between 1997 and 2004. In 2007, Chiquita confessed to the bribes, which CEO Fernando Aguirre described as "protection payments to safeguard our workforce." Finally, Aguirre added, the company found a "business solution," and sold its Colombian assets.

Chiquita has a bloody history in Colombia...

Los Angeles museum gets to keep paintings that accidentally put apples - instead of bananas - in Eden.

The painter got it wrong; the forbidden fruit was a banana. Photos from the Norton Simon Museum.

One of the major misconceptions in theological history is that the apple was the fruit Eve gave Adam, and which subsequently got the couple ejected from Eden. In all likelihood, the placement of the apple is the result of a misinterpretation of scripture by renaissance painters, who took the greek word for apple - "malum" - as a similar-sounding word for "evil" (as in the knowledge of good and evil; that word is the root of our "malice".)

I discuss the linguistic evidence for the banana's true role in Eden in the first chapter of my book; the argument was originally put forth by biblical scholar Schneir Levin in the Winter/Spring 2004 edition of Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought (read it here.)

Now, the Los Angeles Times says that a dispute over the ownership of one of those paintings has been settled...