Global Pesticide Campaigner
March 1998, Volume 8, Number 1
by Rachel Massey

Jose1 has been a banana plantation worker, or bananero, since the age of 13. Now, aged 35, he lives with his wife and three children in a small house in the midst of a banana plantation in the Central Atlantic Zone of Costa Rica. He is one of the 8,000 Costa Rican workers whose sperm counts are abnormally low due to contact with the pesticide DBCP, and he suffers from headaches, weakness, and skin irritation due to his daily contact with other pesticides. Low-flying airplanes that fumigate the plantation often spray his house as well; the pesticides fall on his wife when she is hanging laundry out to dry, and on his daughters as they play outside. The water that comes from the tap in his house is usually yellow or green, sometimes brown. He plans to stay on at the plantation, because he has a house here and debts to pay. But he does not feel secure. The soil is "tired": the plantation is 30 years old, and yields are falling. He thinks that the company may soon abandon its plantations in the Central Atlantic Zone.

Costa Rica is one of the world's largest producers of bananas for export, second only to Ecuador. Large tracts of the country's most fertile land on the southern Pacific and Atlantic coasts produced bananas for decades until depleted soils and pest infestations caused the banana companies to abandon their plantations there. Now, in the country's Central Atlantic Zone, over 50,000 hectares of land, much of it formerly covered by forest, are devoted to monoculture plantations of Cavendish bananas produced for markets in Europe and North America. These plantations are major contributors to Costa Rica's most serious environmental problems, including deforestation, pesticide contamination and solid waste pollution.2 Their role in creating public health problems is also extensively documented, as is the banana companies' practice of labor union repression.3 Responses to this situation have emerged among non- governmental organizations (NGOs) at the international, national and local level. Some organizations engage in public education and lobbying, pressing banana companies to adhere to minimum environmental and social standards. Others are engaged in the attempt to create alternative banana production systems, intended to be environmentally sustainable and to contribute to positive social development.

This article describes the principal efforts currently under way to establish alternative modes of production in Costa Rica. The information presented here is based largely on interviews conducted in two quite different parts of the country: the Southern Atlantic Zone (also called the Talamanca Region), and the Central Atlantic Zone.

Talamanca, Costa Rica's mountainous southeastern region near the border with Panama, has a higher proportion of forested land than any other area of Costa Rica. The United Fruit Company's banana plantations dominated this region early in this century. However, the Company abandoned the zone in 1938, and some of the land it formerly controlled has now been designated as indigenous reservations. Within these reservations and to a lesser extent outside them, some small farmers have maintained traditional, largely self-sufficient basic food production, allowing the forests around them to regenerate. The Central Atlantic Zone, in contrast, is the center of Costa Rica's modern banana industry. The region is a jigsaw puzzle of conventional plantations, surrounded by squatter communities at their margins. In the towns, streets are often blocked by Dole and Chiquita trucks, pictures of radiant children and gleaming tropical fruits painted on their sides. Self-sufficiency is hard to achieve for those who continue to practice small-scale farming here; land is relatively scarce, and even small farmers have come to rely on expensive chemical inputs that bind them to the market economy.

The attempt to create an alternative to the socially and environmentally damaging system of conventional banana production has its basis in two interrelated strains of thought: the concept of organic agriculture as a holistic environmental and social solution, and the concept that local environmental outcomes can be influenced by altering international trade systems.

Alternative agriculture

By opening access to niche markets as well as by renewing and transforming production practices, organic agriculture can improve small farmers' income and food stability. It may provide a means to escape a vicious cycle of dependency in which the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides actually reduces soil fertility and heightens plants' vulnerability to disease. At the same time, it releases farmers from the necessity of purchasing chemical inputs whose prices vary with the fluctuations of international markets. The Green Revolution has increased the income stratification of some rural societies, giving an extra advantage to those who have sufficient land or capital to take full advantage of new technologies, and by the same token further marginalizing the poorest farmers who lack these resources.4 In this context, organic agriculture may be construed as an insurgent agriculture, returning autonomy and even opening special opportunities to the poorest of the poor.5 Ideally, organic agriculture can provide farmers with stability, increased self-sufficiency, and a means to protect the environment while earning a respectable income.

Alternative trade

Standard economic theory holds that "free trade," or the deregulation of international markets, is beneficial to all parties involved in international trade. According to the law of comparative advantage, each member of a trading system can increase its total wealth by specializing in the products its natural endowments allow it to produce most cheaply; it can use the income thus gained to purchase other goods that are produced at a lower cost abroad. According to this theory, whichever countries can produce bananas at the lowest cost should be banana exporters. The problem with this model is that the drive to produce goods as cheaply as possible for export creates strong incentives for companies to impose environmental and social damage on the communities in which the product originates.6

Organic farming releases individuals from health risks and other difficulties associated with plantation work. But the research on which this essay is based suggests that the demands and norms of international trade, and the corporate behavior the conventional trading system encourages, can create serious problems even for organic producers. In some cases, commercial pressures can even undermine the ecological balance that organic production programs seek to sustain. Thus NGOs must not limit their work to the promotion of organic farming and the identification of markets for its products; their work to transform international trading relationships is equally important. (See "The European Banana Action Network," p. 6.)

Putting the vision into practice

Arnaldo, aged 47, lives in the Talamanca Bribri Reserve, an indigenous reservation on the southern Atlantic coast of Costa Rica, near Panama. He used to sell cacao, but moniliasis, a blight that appeared in the 1980s, now makes it almost impossible to achieve significant yields. Along with his wife, six children, and two grandchildren, Arnaldo has begun cultivating organic bananas for sale to the Association of Small Producers of Tala-manca (APPTA), which in turn sells them to the North American baby food producer, Gerber. Every two weeks he carries his harvest of bananas by hand through the forest for an hour until he reaches a point where it can be transported on horseback to the road. APPTA pays him $25 for this harvest, allowing him to cover basic necessities such as salt and shoes.

Organic banana production in Costa Rica has been promoted by national and international NGOs as a means both to make environmental protection economically feasible and to increase workers' independence. These relatively large NGOs work in association with a number of local organizations. In the Tala-manca region, three main grassroots producers' organizations coordinate the sale of organic bananas, which are produced by a diffuse network of small farmers. In the Central Atlantic Zone, organizations of workers in the conventional plantations are working together with small independent farmers' associations to establish a system for organic banana production and sale.

The production of organic bananas for export is better established in the Talamanca Region than in any other part of the country. This is not to say that it has a long history. Residents of the region have traditionally maintained banana plants around their houses for their own consumption and to feed the pig or two that many households keep. The idea of producing organic bananas for export arose as recently as 1991. Now somewhat more than 3500 hectares of land in the region are being used to produce organic bananas for sale.

The Association of Small Producers of Talamanca (APPTA), 80% of whose members are indigenous, is one of Talamanca's principal producers' organizations. Every two weeks APPTA's rickety blue truck travels through the Talamanca Bribri Indigenous Reserve and the surrounding area collecting bananas, which individual farmers have left in small, neat piles at the roadside. At each house, the staff hoist the bananas onto their truck in a large hand-woven basket, weigh them, pay about US$25 in cash, and move slowly on. The route ends at the shore of the Sixaola River. The Sixaola is wide and muddy and unmistakably tropical, with an intimidating current interspersed with quiet mud flats. Along this current arrive more farmers in canoes, carrying bananas from plots inaccessible by road. In the sunset and into the night they unload bananas in the shallow water. When the truck is full, around 1:00 AM, the driver sets out for the capital, where the bananas are delivered to Gerber for processing into puree.

The producers use their earnings to buy salt, shoes, clothing, and sometimes food. For many, it is their only source of income. For some, it is the first time they have ever sold anything. One indigenous woman described how APPTA's organic banana program has affected her life:

We use the income from banana sales to buy food, shoes and clothing. Before, we didn't sell anything. Before, my husband had to work on contracts, as a peon [day laborer] in cacao and banana farms, cutting brush. He would have to go through the mud, walking through the mud. He'd be away a week, two weeks, struggling.

In the Central Atlantic Zone, one of the main organizations working to promote organic banana production and sales is the Union of Agricultural Plantation Workers (SITRAP). Because the availability of labor for the banana plantations is assured in part by the very environmental and social problems that the plantation economy causes, leaders of SITRAP have concluded that it is not sufficient simply to combat problems from within the plantations. Rather, it is necessary to work at their periphery to create alternatives for members of the shifting labor force who alternate between plantation work and subsistence agriculture on small farms and in squatter communities. The union attempted earlier in this decade to establish a pilot organic banana project, but was foiled by one of the transnationals, which opened legal proceedings to claim the land on which the project was based. A new project is now under way. The short- and medium-term goal of this project is to help workers establish self-sufficient organic farms, producing a variety of crops including bananas, that will allow them to avoid returning to the plantations. Its long-term goals include the sale of organic bananas for export.7 There are also organizations in the region whose main constituency consists of independent small farmers. One of these, the Campe-sino Association for Food Sovereignty of the Atlantic (ACPSAA), has established a training and microlending system intended to help small farmers enter organic production.

All organic bananas currently produced in Costa Rica for export are processed into puree; none are exported whole. The primary use for organic banana puree is in manufacturing baby food, for which concerned parents in the first world are willing to pay substantial prices. The first transnational to engage in commerce with the small farmers of Talamanca was a German baby food company, Hipp. After a period of cooperation with the producers' organizations, Hipp made an attempt to sign contracts directly with individual farmers, bypassing their representative organizations. These contracts would have ensured that not only the bananas but all other products of these farms had to be offered to Hipp before the farmers could consider selling them elsewhere. This event led two of the three main organizations to break off contact with Hipp, although the company continues to operate in the area through a daughter company. Now, however, the main buyer in Talamanca is the American baby food company, Gerber. In the Central Atlantic Zone, the main buyer of organic bananas is the Chiquita subsidiary, Mundimar. Neither Gerber nor Mundimar has employed tactics like those of Hipp. However, they have engaged in practices that enhance corporate profits at the expense of small farmers' security. Gerber has repeatedly changed the amount of fruit it agrees to buy from producers. Originally, the company encouraged farmers to increase production rapidly. Later, citing oversupply and lagging demand, it reduced its purchase quotas and negotiated a lower price for the fruit, leaving many farmers with a negligible return on their investments.8

In the Central Atlantic Zone, Mundimar is currently encouraging a similar increase in production. In 1995, Mundimar approached ACPSAA to request that member farmers be encouraged to begin producing organic bananas. ACPSAA is not directly involved in banana purchase as similar organizations are in the Talamanca Region, but the Association facilitates initial contacts between the company and small farmers or plantation workers hoping to enter organic production. Currently, farmers receiving loans for organic banana production are encouraged to increase their acreage under production in increments of half a hectare.9 This loan program has allowed some small farmers to raise their standard of living significantly. The improvement will not, however, necessarily be long-lasting. As farmers expand the area under cultivation, prices may be forced down and the risk of devastation by plant diseases may increase.

Certification

All organic bananas produced in Costa Rica for export as puree are certified by North American or European agencies. Like other aspects of organic production for export, the certification process sets up complicated power relationships that producers' organizations have gradually learned to negotiate.

When Hipp began purchasing organic bananas from farmers in Talamanca, the company took responsibility for paying for the farms' certification. The inspection process covered each farm in full, so that anything else they produced would automatically be certified as organic as well. As noted above, Hipp employees attempted to prevent the farmers from capitalizing on this certification, pressing them to give Hipp preferential access to all their organic products. After APPTA broke off relations with Hipp, its members resolved to ensure their collective independence by financing their own certification. APPTA now pays for its own yearly certification; it has worked with the European organization Ecocert, and the North American certification agencies OCIA and Oregon Tilth.

Even when producers' organizations are able to scrape together the funds to pay for certification themselves, they are dependent on European or North American certification agencies, which base their certification process on methods that some farmers say are irrelevant in a tropical environment and charge a substantial price for their services. Especially for Costa Rican farmers who wish to sell certified products on the domestic market, these prices may be prohibitive. A new Costa Rican certifying agency, EcoLOGICA, has undertaken to establish a national Costa Rican certification agency whose prices and methods would better match Costa Rican farmers' needs.

Other challenges

Over the seven years that small farmers in Talamanca have been marketing their bananas, a number of problems have arisen in their relationship with the companies that purchase their product. The companies have demanded varying quantities of fruit, and have manipulated prices to the disadvantage of producers. Their policies have encouraged competition and hostility among farmers' organizations: local leaders spend their energy vying for contracts to sell the bananas their constituents have worked to produce. The companies have also contributed to confusion among the widely-dispersed and isolated farmers about how to produce their bananas. At times, the buyers' demand for a rapid production increase has created temptations to speed the banana plants' growth by cutting down the tall trees that shade them. Increased light boosts growth rates but also increases vulnerability to disease -- as well as undermining one of the purposes of organic banana cultivation, to preserve forest cover intact. Currently the goal of each of the producer organizations is to find a way to sell whole, fresh organic bananas. Their hope is that by selling fresh fruit they will finally be able to bypass the multinationals, selling directly to concerned, responsible consumers. Each organization is attempting to arrange this separately, with little or no consultation with its counterparts.

Costa Rican NGOs often receive calls from European consumers' organizations eager to purchase whole, fresh organic bananas. However, producing whole, fresh fruit for export to Europe is more easily said than done, especially if it is to be carried out by small producers' organizations with minimal access to capital. Organic banana production poses a number of serious practical challenges. For example, the ripening process must be carefully controlled. Bananas must be shipped while they are still green in order to avoid bruising. Furthermore, all the bananas in a shipment must be at the same stage of immaturity. If one banana ripens, it releases ethylene that causes the others around it to ripen as well. Thus in order to ship fresh bananas to Europe, organizations such as APPTA would have to find a way to synchronize production and harvest among their member-producers. Once they had arranged for all producers to harvest bananas at precisely the same stage of ripeness on collection days, other challenges would remain. Transport to the ports would have to be accomplished more professionally than it currently is, perhaps using more modern trucks to avoid bruising fruit; and the organizations would have to gain access to shipping infrastructure, which is controlled by the banana transnationals.10

Increased precision would also be required in disease control. Among the fungal diseases to which banana plants in Costa Rica are vulnerable is black sigatoka (mycosphaerella musicola). A plant infected with black sigatoka can produce viable fruit, and as long as the fruit is destined for processing into puree, minor infections with black sigatoka are unproblematic. However, the disease alters the fruit's maturation cycle, causing it to ripen prematurely, a disastrous result if fruit must be kept fresh for several weeks. Conventional banana producers fight black sigatoka through the aerial application of fungicides. Organic farmers can protect their banana plants from black sigatoka by planting them in low densities under a cover of tall shade trees. However, this is not fail-safe; and when buyers demand increased production, farmers are sometimes tempted to cut down these protective shade trees to speed fruit growth.

It is important to note, in closing, that the challenges described above are not identical wherever bananas are cultivated. Black sigatoka, for example, while particularly virulent in Costa Rica, is completely absent from some of the Caribbean banana producing islands. Organic banana producers in Mexico and the Dominican Republic successfully produce organic bananas for sale in the United States. Costa Rica's stable political system and its much-advertised image as a haven of environmental protection has made it popular with NGOs seeking to promote organic production; but a thorough evaluation of the viability of organic banana production more generally would require an examination of production in other countries.

Conclusion

There are benefits to combining two approaches to create an alternative to conventional banana production: organic production and "fair trade." While organic production might be the alternative that more readily occurs to those concerned with environmental protection, I suggest that on its own the promotion of organic production is not a panacea. The environmental as well as the social profile of organic banana production is largely determined by the influence of the multinational companies that purchase the product. The overproduction that these multinationals encourage in Costa Rica leads not only to low and insecure prices but also to poor land stewardship: farmers are encouraged to create monoculture plots that are vulnerable to disease and pest infestation. Certified organic production on its own guarantees neither a stable livelihood nor long-term envir- onmental sustainability -- although it constitutes a very important step toward both. NGOs concerned with development and the environment must therefore do more than merely promote organic production -- they must supplement and reinforce this work by establishing alternative trading relationships.

Special thanks for assistance in Costa Rica from Gilberth Bermudez and staff of SITRAP; Walter Rodriguez and staff of APPTA; Luis Brenes and staff of ANAO; Juan Argueda, Javier Bogantes, and Gerardo Alfaro of the Fundación Guilombe; plantation workers whose names are omitted to maintain confidentiality; Banana Link; and Maria Furugori, who contributed information from interviews she conducted.

Rachel Massey is a graduate student in the Department of Politics and the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy Program at Princeton University, New Jersey.

Notes

1. Workers' names have been changed to protect anonymity.

2. See, for example, Yamileth Astorga and Jaime Bustamante, 1993, Caracterización del impacto ambiental de la actividad bananera en Costa Rica (San Jose: Asociación Ecologista Costarricense (AECO)); Luko Hilje Q. et al., 1992, El Uso de los Plaguicidas en Costa Rica (San Jose: Editorial Heliconia); Stefan Agne and Hermann Waibel, 1997, Pesticide Policy in Costa Rica, Pesticides News 36; and William Henriques et al., 1997, Agrochemical Use on Banana Plantations in Latin America: Perspectives on Ecological Risk. Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry 16:1, pp. 91-99.

3. On health, sources include Jorge Norman Jimenez, 1995, Plaguicidas y salud en las bananeras de Costa Rica (San Jose: ASEPROLA); Damarys Quiros Vega et al., 1994, Intoxicaciones con Plaguicidas en Costa Rica (San Jose: Centro Nacional de Control de Intoxicaciones). For a summary of labor conditions in the country, see Martin Upham, 1996, Trade Unions of the World (London: Cartermill International) or U.S. Department of Labor (1994-95), Foreign Labor Trends: Costa Rica (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of International Labor Affairs). Documentation of labor rights violations can be obtained through Coordinadora de Sindicatos Bananeros de Costa Rica.

4. See Alain De Janvry, 1981, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press); Gordon Conway and Edward Barbier, 1990, After the Green Revolution: Sustainable Agriculture for Development (London: Earthscan).

5. For a description of this dynamic in coffee production, see Ellen Contreras Murphy, 1995, La Selva and the Magnetic Pull of Markets: Organic Coffee-Growing in Mexico, Grassroots Development, 19:1, pp. 27-34.

6. See Herman Daly, 1993, The Perils of Free Trade, Scientific American 269:5.

7. This paragraph draws on interviews with Gilberth Bermudez (SITRAP), Juan Carlos Serrano (Centro Mondialita Sviluppo Reciproco), and Josue Rojas (ACPSAA), July 1997.

8. This paragraph is based on interviews with Walter Rodriguez (APPTA), Christian Thommen (UCANEHU), and Juan Argueda (Fundación Guilombe), July 1997.

9. Banana producers, personal communications.

10. This paragraph draws on interviews with Luis Brenes (ANAO) and Walter Rodriguez (APPTA). It is worth noting that Costa Rican producers' organizations, as well as the NGOs that support them, have focused primarily on the identification of markets in Europe. Were they to pursue markets in North America, at least one practical problem would be diminished in that shipping time would be significantly shorter.