Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (review)

John Soluri's book is about growing, protecting, transporting, and marketing bananas. In this account, focused on the north coast of Honduras, old-fashioned, banana-republic politics takes a backseat; Soluri is more interested in "going bananas": in how monoculture changed the physical and social landscape.

Between 1870 and 1970, Honduras was the largest banana producer. It exported a record 29 million bunches in 1929, which exceeded the combined total of all its competitors. By then, big banana companies controlled an infrastructure of railroads, bridges, and port facilities. Even so, they did not crowd out the little guy; small growers still accounted for between a third and half of the country's banana exports. What eventually undermined the small growers? According to Soluri, it was the high cost of fighting an onslaught of lethal pathogens.

First came the soil-borne Panama disease, which reduced both output and quality, forcing growers to clear and replant in new regions. Then another adversary struck, the deadly Sigatoka fungus. Between 1936 and 1937 company exports dropped by a third; for independent growers, exports dropped by half. This time, relocating did no good. The disease had to be fought on the plantations by dousing every tree regularly with a Bordeaux mixture of lime and copper sulfate. Companies had to import thousands of tons of chemicals, plus pumps, pipes, and storage tanks. Production costs rose 40 percent and thousands of new workers had to be hired. Small growers could no longer compete.

Spraying was a messy business. Based on interviews with retired workers, Soluri takes us on an eye-opening tour inside the plantations. At night, after a hard day at spraying, a worker's skin turned blue and stained the mattress. Workers survived by rotating to different plantation jobs such as staking, ditching, planting, weeding, trimming, or cutting bananas. Or they moved on to a different plantation. They stayed with the work because it paid twice as much as manual labor did in town.

Quality control also gave the big companies an edge. By investing in drainage, reservoirs, and irrigation, United Fruit produced a large, plump, unblemished banana, just what the "jobbers" who worked with Fruit Dispatch wanted. During the 1920s, Fruit Dispatch, a subsidiary of United Fruit, distributed over half the bananas imported into the U.S. market.

In the 1940s, the sexy Miss Chiquita educated Americans on banana etiquette; a fruit from the "tropical equator," she sang to a calypso beat, should never be put "in the refrigerator." A new era of mass consumption had set in. Some 70 percent of American women now shopped in self-service supermarkets like Kroger; almost every family had an electric refrigerator. United Fruit, however, did not prosper. In 1952, Ecuador had surpassed Honduras as top banana. Its virgin soil had yet to be infected with Panama disease; it had no Sigatoka. Back in Honduras, a pro-labor government demanded higher wages, shorter shifts, and vacations. Between 1950 and 1960, United Fruit's earnings fell from $66 million to $2 million; its stock price fell from $70 to $15 a share. To stay afloat, United Fruit substituted aerial dusting with Dithane-22 for Bordeaux spray. This controlled Sigatoka, increased yields, and cut back on labor—the company reduced its Honduran workforce by half. Meanwhile, United Fruit introduced a new Cavendish banana that was resistant to Panama disease. With Miss Chiquita defending market share back at home, the company recovered. Between 1963 and 1966 its profits rose from $1.7 to $15 million.

A central theme in Soluri's banana story is the uphill battle against plant pathogens. Monoculture, dense planting, and a regimen of pesticides, weedicides, and fertilizers only made a bad situation worse. Now we wonder if the banana itself can survive. For readers to have followed this story, Soluri would need to have equipped them with a bit more banana biology. Are rhizome offsets...