Sometimes you just have to eat a banana

Submitted by Meredith Epstein

Ah, the banana: that mellow yellow crescent of tropical sweetness. Pan-fried in a bath of butter and brown sugar. Serving as a vessel for mounds of frozen cream, lattices of chocolaty syrup, and a sprinkling of nuts and cherries. Simmered in a deep pot of black beans with a hint of ginger and cocoa. Overripe, mashed into a cellulosic goo, baked with allspice into a warm loaf. Or simply smothered in peanut butter. You really can’t go wrong.

Oh, the banana: the most environmentally destructive human rights infringement in a peel. You would be hard-pressed to find a productive banana tree pushing soil anywhere from Maine to California, yet it is a regular on the American grocery list. It is the most widely cultivated fruit crop in the world, grown in well over one hundred countries and ringing up four billion dollars annually in export trade. Seventy-two and a half million metric tons of the sunny fruits were produced worldwide in 2005, with India, Brazil, China, Ecuador, and the Philippines rounding out the top five growers. In the United States bananas are a luxury commodity that we grab for a breakfast on-the-go. For millions of people in developing nations who depend on them for daily calorie intake and wage, they are a matter of life or death.

The industrial plantations where most bananas are grown in Latin America, South America, Africa, and Asia are a nightmare. Critical spans of forest are clear-cut to make way for monolithic monocultures of hybrid crops that are doused with petrochemical biocides and fertilizers. Planes sweep over the rows of trees, hawk-like, dusting both plants and workers with Organochlorines. Chemical exposure has been linked to higher cancer rates among banana workers than the general population. Lack of genetic diversity in the fields makes the crop extremely susceptible to diseases and bacteria that can wipe out entire regions’ yields. This threatens the livelihoods of both workers and regional consumers.

The banana industry, like most others, is dominated by a handful of multinational corporations—Dole and Chiquita own over half of all banana cultivation in the world. Their plantations are ridden with child labor, disregard for pesticide regulations, and wages below half the legal minimum. Most employment with these companies is through contractors, so workers have no job security, do not receive benefits, cannot form unions, and are often relocated with no say in the matter. In effect, these people become migrant workers on their own land.

In March 2007, the United States Justice Department fined Chiquita Brands International $25 million for funding terrorist organizations in Latin and South America—specifically Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), among other rebel groups in the volatile nation’s countryside. This right-wing paramilitary group is responsible for most of the country’s brutal civilian slaughters and cocaine exports. Chiquita paid AUC millions of dollars in cash over an eight-year span in exchange for armed patrol of their banana plantations. That same month on her nationally syndicated public radio show Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman discussed a 1998 exposé in the Cincinnati Enquirer that revealed how “…Chiquita exposed entire communities to dangerous U.S.-banned pesticides, forced the eviction of an entire Honduran village at gunpoint and its subsequent bulldozing, suppressed unions, unwittingly allowed the use of Chiquita transport ships to move cocaine internationally, and paid a fortune to U.S. politicians to influence trade policy.”

Not such an everyday fruit, now is it?

Equipped with these banana facts, am I morally obligated to give up one of my favorite fruits? I’d say that I eat roughly one banana per week, which means 52 bananas per year. I will probably have consumed well over one thousand by the time I turn 25! How do I deal with the realization that that may as well be considered a crime?

Over the last five years I have been working to embrace the responsibility of conscientious consumption. Some of the changes I have been compelled to make have been easily incorporated into my daily life. Others, not so much. Sometimes I cheat. But ultimately, no matter what I am “giving up,” it seldom brings a sense of deprivation when I get into the swing of it. On the contrary, the adjustment brings greater feelings of fulfillment in the sense that I am sparing someone or something, somewhere, some suffering.

Nowadays it seems as if these are straightforward solutions that are becoming common knowledge and practice. The ultimate purpose of such customs is to be aware of the complexity of supply chains and to examine the social, economic, moral and environmental consequences of goods all the way from production to consumption to disposal. The difficulty in gaining awareness lies in the sheer extent of that complexity over the entire lifecycle of a product, be it an apple, a steak, or a sedan. Industries devote billions of dollars every year to covering up the pathway of suffering that begins with the cotton seed in the ground and ends not with the shirt on your back but in the landfill where that shirt ends up once you’ve worn it out. Even the “simplest” of goods—a banana—is not simple at all.

Some bananas are obviously better than others. Goodman concludes her article by saying, “That next organic, fair-trade banana you buy just might save a life.” But even if I make sure that the bunch is organic and fair trade certified, it is still shipped thousands of miles, emitting tons of carbon dioxide. The only justification I can find for purchasing the damn things is this: I love them. I love their slick, sticky meatiness. I love them in pancakes, over cereal, in trail mix, as pudding, covered in chocolate, or just as is.

I have become so hyper-conscientious and downright fearful about the smallest shred of consumption that every now and then I wonder if some therapy wouldn’t do me some good. I’m getting burned out and I’m only 21 years old. I eat, sleep, and drink sustainability—except I do not have time to eat or sleep because of it. My life is organic farming and dumpster diving and cooperative housing; committee meetings and conference calls and trainings; lobbying and education and direct action. When I told a seasoned anti-nuclear activist that I was too burned out to host an event for him, he responded, “Of course you’re burned out! We’re all burned out! And that’s not going to change because the Earth is burned out! So get used to it.”
There are many vital components to a successful sustainability movement, but if you ask me, the key point is this: it must be a sustainable sustainability movement. Surely no one can stay strong after ten, twenty, thirty years of burnout! How do we sustain ourselves? There are species to save and solar panels to install; organic vegetables to harvest and policies to pass through Congress! There are forests to protect and mountains of trash to pick up; children to teach and rights to defend! How am I going to keep up?

Environmentalism encompasses every aspect of existence. I am learning to devote my energy to one main struggle—which is?-- because each of our struggles is part of the greater whole.
The world has evolved into such a tangle of globe-spanning systems that it seems impossible to do absolutely everything right. The entire way our society is structured is wrong but we have to live in it the way it is. We can’t fix it all this instant, but we can acknowledge our roles in the process and act. Joni Mitchell said it right – we are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden. So gather your friends. Pick your fights. Pack your bags. Don’t forget the snacks. Sometimes, if you want a banana, you just have to eat one.

[This article originally appeared in the October-November 2008 issue of River Gazette, published by St. Mary's College of Maryland. www.smcm.edu/rivergazette]