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	<title>Dan Koeppel&#039;s Blog &#187; Banana Economics</title>
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	<description>Bananas, Los Angeles, and Transit Geekery</description>
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		<title>Alternate Banana Varieties in NYC</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1046#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/1046#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 05 Jan 2010 00:01:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Del Monte]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Monoculture]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=1046</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The corporate banana monoculture, based on the Cavendish variety &#8211; which accounts for 99% of the world&#8217;s export crop &#8211; is both doomed and dangerous. Diseases are striking the world crop, forcing increased used of pesticides (when the diseases are curable, which isn&#8217;t always the case.) Reliance on a single, commodity fruit makes it impossible to do anything but exploit workers and land &#8211; it would be too expensive to do otherwise. The banana industry, however, refuses to budge from the monoculture, for the most part, saying it is impossible to import any other variety in bulk. But that&#8217;s exactly what is being done in so-called ethnic markets. Here&#8217;s a shot I took last month of an alternate variety, commonly known as &#8220;apple&#8221; bananas, being sold under the Manhattan Bridge in New York&#8217;s Chinatown. What does this mean? The fruit comes from Del Monte, one of the world&#8217;s largest banana importers (though it isn&#8217;t a major presence in the U.S.) I&#8217;d ask the question: does &#8220;impossible&#8221; mean that systems really can&#8217;t be developed, or that the major banana outfits &#8211; Dole and Chiquita &#8211; are simply afraid (or lack the creativity) to run their banana business as anything but the [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Wasteful &#8211; but innovative &#8211; banana packaging</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/906#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/906#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:30:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=906</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The reason we have only one kind of banana &#8211; out of the 1,000+ found worldwide &#8211; is partly an issue of transportation: every banana type ripens differently and has widely varying levels of fragility. In the 1950s, when the &#8220;original&#8221; commercial banana, the Gros Michel, was going functionally extinct, Dole came up with the idea of bagging and boxing a potential replacement fruit &#8211; the Cavendish &#8211; in order to allow it to survive the long trip from the tropics to our stores. The plan worked, and the banana industry was saved. Today, as disease ravages the global Cavendish crop, packing and shipping technologies are once again becoming key to replacing the commercial fruit. At the same time, bananas compete more and more with candy and other junk food at convenience stores, where branding and presentation beyond an oval sticker might be a plus (at least in terms of marketing.) Del Monte and 7-Eleven seem to believe just that and have begun, at about 30 stores near the convenience store giant&#8217;s Dallas headquarters, a small retail test of bagged and branded bananas. The packaging is designed to extend the shelf-life of the fruit from two to five days. (I&#8217;m [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Dole backs down, drops suit against filmmaker</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/883#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/883#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 17 Oct 2009 02:03:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Dole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=883</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[PLUS: See the film in New York Wednesday, October 21, at 7:15 PM. Details here. After pressure from the Swedish government  - efforts to boycott the banana company were underway, with a strong chance they would spread to other EU nations &#8211; Dole dropped a lawsuit it had filed against Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and his film, &#8220;BANANAS!*&#8221;, which tells the story of the company&#8217;s pesticide use in the 1970s and the damage that practice inflicted on Nicaraguan workers. Here&#8217;s the full text of Dole&#8217;s statement: WESTLAKE VILLAGE, CALIFORNIA &#8211; October 14, 2009 Dole Food Company, Inc. today announced that it is dismissing its defamation lawsuit against filmmakers Fredrik Gertten, Margarete Jangård and WG Film AB in the Los Angeles Superior Court, relating to the film BANANAS!*. Dole made its decision in light of the free speech concerns being expressed in Sweden, although it continues to believe in the merits of its case. Dole strongly believes in freedom of speech and expression, which are so important in Sweden and the United States. [Emphasis added. Dole's view of our own First Amendment rights is, apparently, mostly, afterthought.] &#8220;While the filmmakers continue to show a film that is fundamentally flawed and contains [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Special Report: Why Dole sues filmmakers</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/848#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/848#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 06 Oct 2009 02:50:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Dole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Environment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Latin America]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=848</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The following is the original English text of an article I wrote for Dagens Nyheter, the largest daily newspaper in Sweden. The story is about Dole&#8217;s attempt to stop the distribution of &#8220;BANANAS!*&#8221;, a documentary made by Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten that the banana company believes to be untrue. The film is about lawsuits filed against Dole by Nicaraguan workers claiming to have been injured by the company&#8217;s use of a pesticide called Nemagon, or DBCP. In 2007, those workers achieved a partial victory against the banana company &#8211; but a follow-up suit was dismissed earlier this year after lawyers for the fruit giant offered evidence that the lawyer for the laborers had falsified information (here&#8217;s one of many news accounts about the trial&#8217;s denouement.) Here, I explain why I find that &#8220;evidence&#8221; unconvincing &#8211; and why Dole&#8217;s suit has roots not just in a century of  banana industry history, but also in a business model that persists to this day. For background on the issue, have a look at the filmmaker&#8217;s timeline or at Dole&#8217;s entire page on Nemagon. More links below. THE BURNING OF THE LA CEIBA, HONDURAS TOWN HALL in 1903 was the work of more than an ordinary [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Chiquita connection to Honduras crisis?</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/831#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/831#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:37:10 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Latin America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Politics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=831</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Democracy Now radio program interviewed Nicholas Kozloff, who argued that there&#8217;s a Chiquita connection in the current Honduran political crisis, which saw President Manuel Zelaya deposed in either a coup or a constitutional emergency, or both, depending on which side you&#8217;re on, in June. The banana industry once made Honduras its largest exporting nation; that changed with Hurricane Mitch, in 1986, which devastated the crop, but there&#8217;s still a huge plantation network there. Here&#8217;s what Kozloff had to say: &#8220;&#8230;there’s this revolving door of Washington insiders that are supporting companies like Chiquita banana. I just wrote an article about Chiquita, formerly known as the United Fruit Company. And, you know, throughout history, Chiquita banana has had enormous sway and power over Central American nations. And we know that prior to the coup d’état in Honduras, Chiquita was very unhappy about President Zelaya’s minimum wage decrees, because they said that this would cut into their profits and make it more expensive for them to export bananas and pineapple. And we know that they appealed to the Honduran Business Association, which was also opposed to Zelaya’s minimum wage provisions. And we also—and what I find really interesting is that Chiquita is [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Dominican Farmers Abandon Fair Trade</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/774#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/774#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:54:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=774</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The problem with Fair Trade bananas is that bananas are too cheap &#8211; there&#8217;s just not enough cash in the pipeline to make this strategy for bringing true &#8220;fairness&#8221; to the fruit effective (Fair Trade bananas cost, at most, just a few pennies more than conventional fruit; compare that to coffee and chocolate &#8211; two relative Fair Trade success stores &#8211; which garner huge premiums for their provenance.) Farmers in Dominica are finding that out, as this story, from Dominica News Online, reports, quoting Mitchell Roberts, of the country&#8217;s National Fair Trade Organisation. “The costs of inputs escalated, the cost of packaging material escalated, labour has always been a high cost, and because of that farmers feel that they were not making money and their cost of production is high and the returns they get, was not reflective of the amount of effort they put, so some farmers definitely had to leave it,” Roberts stated.  He said there are now three hundred and fifty active Fairtrade farmers selling bananas, a major decrease over the last year.  “We started with close to six hundred farmers when we started last year, and now, we are down to three hundred and fifty,” he said. There&#8217;s [...]]]></description>
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		<title>Tweeting Banana Arrivals in San Diego</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/523#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/523#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 02 Aug 2009 10:41:25 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Dole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://bigparadela.com/wordpress/?p=523</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From Danforth&#8217;s flickr stream. Writer/comedian Danforth France saw this Dole freighter unloading in San Diego while he was attending last week&#8217;s Comic-Con, and he sent me the linked tweet. The ship is the Dole Honduras &#8211; one of two that constitute the banana giant&#8217;s Pacific fleet. The vessel makes over 20 annual north-south trips along a route that stretches from San Diego to Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala; Caldera, Costa Rica; Guayaquil, Ecuador; and Paita, Peru, according to  Dole Ocean Cargo. Danforth&#8217;s image was taken July 26, and the vessel&#8217;s current schedule indicates that it is handling shorter haul work right now. The Port of San Diego&#8217;s Marine Information System indicates that it has already made a full round trip since then, and is due back today. It will depart for Costa Rica on Tuesday, August 4, The most interesting thing about the vessel is its color. Tradition has it that banana boats be painted white. Chiquita&#8217;s ships, starting even before the early 1900s,were known as the &#8220;Great White Fleet.&#8221; Though the Honduras is a bit of a shabby beige, it fits the traditional scheme, which is more than just  custom. Bananas are highly perishable and grown far away. They have to be shipped [...]]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>A Guide to Those &quot;Baby&quot; Bananas &#8211; and What They Prove</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/6#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/6#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 07 Jun 2009 18:33:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Dole]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana News]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/a-guide-to-those-baby-bananas-and-what-they-prove/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Huggable, lovable &#8211; but not the kind of baby banana that I&#8217;m talking about. Though the vast majority of bananas we buy &#8211; statistically, all &#8211; are of the endangered Cavendish variety, there&#8217;s a good chance you&#8217;ve seen something else, these days and if you&#8217;re a banana-type (or have become one), you might have wondered: what are those little bananas? Both Chiquita and Dole offer versions of the half-sized fruit, with Chiquita selling them under the &#8220;Minis&#8221; brand, and Dole offering them as &#8220;Baby&#8221; bananas. In the &#8220;big&#8221; banana world, there&#8217;s absolutely no difference between what Chiquita, Dole (or any other commercial banana importer) sells: everything is Cavendish. Action surrounds small-time fruit. For the first time in over a century, the two biggest banana companies are slugging it out for a market niche with different varieties. The Chiquita &#8220;Mini&#8221; is a breed called Pisang Mas, originally from Malaysia, but now &#8211; like all bananas imported to the U.S. &#8211; grown in Latin America. Dole actually sells three different varieties under the Baby band name &#8211; Orito, Lady Finger, and Manzano. The fruit are tough to find, since they&#8217;re in various stages of test-marketing, as well as subject to seasonal variation. [...]]]></description>
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		<item>
		<title>No Cups or Glasses Necessary&#8230;</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/13#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/13#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:41:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/04/28/no-cups-or-glasses-necessary/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[<div class="posttagsblock"><a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Banana%20Art" rel="tag">Banana Art</a></div>]]></description>
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		<title>Banana Price Watch: 7-Eleven, Los Angeles</title>
		<link>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/17#utm_source=feed&#038;utm_medium=feed&#038;utm_campaign=feed</link>
		<comments>http://www.bigparadela.com/wordpress/archives/17#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 21 Apr 2009 08:07:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Bananas]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Chiquita]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Economics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Banana Price Watch]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://dankoeppel.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/banana-price-watch-7-eleven-los-angeles/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[That&#8217;s my beloved local Sev. To zoom in, you&#8217;ve got to go there. So go. Interesting strategy at my favorite local convenience store, on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Rosemont In the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (just steps from Dodger Stadium.) Instead of the typical branded, presented-in-a-box fruit Chiquita is selling in many U.S. convenience stores, the fruit here is bought at local supermarkets and sold in an ordinary basket. At the current price &#8211; 69 cents per banana &#8211; the store manager told me customers purchased a respectable fifty or so a day. Still, he thought he could do better, and was about to add a twofer, with a pair of bananas going for a buck.&#160; The DIY approach nets the local shop a considerable profit over Chiquita&#39;s all-in-one strategy, which involves a national distribution network of refrigerated product, each fruit with a sticker on it, to of about 13,000 convenience stores. Chiquita&#39;s suggested retail price for its product is 75 to 99 cents. The benefit, it says, is that that the&#160;controlled supplyand special packaging allows the fruit to arrive at the stores perfectly ripe &#8211; eliminating the need for store managers to spend time waiting for [...]]]></description>
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