Category: Tropical Fruits

Historic moment in Costa Rican labour history

Chapter 2 / The effects – hunger and malnutrition / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

By Bert Schouwenburg

We are grateful to Bert Schouwenburg and to Banana Link for permission to reproduce this article. It was first published in The Morning Star who did not reply to our request for permission to reproduce the article. It was later produced in the first edition of the Banana Trade Blog which is produced by Banana Link (www.bananalink.org.uk )

Trade Union leaders are no stranger to hyperbole but when public sector union, ANEP’s General Secretary, Albino Vargas told delegates at the annual general assembly of SITRAP  (Agricultural Plantation Workers Union) that the event came at a historic moment in Costa Rica’s labour history, he was not exaggerating.

The assembly was held on January 20th [2019] in the heart of Limón’s banana growing zone at the Pococí Expo Centre in Guápiles. The 700 SITRAP members and their families were bussed in from all over the region during an operation that, for some, commenced at 3.30am to ensure that everyone was present for breakfast and an 8am start. Previous assemblies had been held at a much smaller venue in Siquirres where SITRAP have their premises, and before that in the main hall of their building itself when active membership of the union was at its lowest ebb.

GMB’s relationship with SITRAP began in 2003 under the auspices of NGO Banana Link’s ‘Union to Union’ programme aimed at establishing direct links with workers in Latin America’s tropical fruit plantations. SITRAP was in dire straits, its membership decimated by a sophisticated and ruthless campaign, headed up by the Costa Rican government, to drive trade unions out of the banana industry altogether. In the early 1980s, the then powerful unions’ fight for better working conditions prompted the employers to close down all their farms on the Pacific coast and throw thousands of people out of work. In a sustained propaganda exercise the closures of what were uneconomic plantations was blamed on trade union militancy and intransigence.

To this day, criticising the unions for the Pacific coast closures is an integral part of the banana producers’ strategy to dissuade workers from forming and joining them. Aided and abetted by the San José dioceses of the Roman Catholic Church, who have described them as being the work of the devil, they have spread the doctrine of ‘Solidarismo’, a concept enshrined in Costa Rican law whereby workers are encouraged to elect representatives to ‘permanent committees’ who then conclude ‘direct agreements’ with management to the exclusion of independent trade unions. Needless to say, these agreements are presented to the committees on a take it or leave it basis with no room for negotiation. Solidarista associations have been formed throughout the length and breadth of not just the banana industry but also in plantations growing pineapples of which Costa Rica is the world’s number one exporter. Where union organisation appears, workers are harassed, intimidated and, if they do not renounce their membership, are sacked and blacklisted.

One of GMB’s first initiatives was to raise funds so that SITRAP could complete much needed renovations to their building in Siquirres, a successful project that led to the assembly hall being dedicated to the late Brian Weller, a much-loved activist from London, in whose name the money was collected. This was followed by a memorandum of understanding between the unions and a two year funding agreement that kept SITRAP afloat and gave them breathing space to build their organisational capacity in an extremely hostile environment.

Slowly, but incrementally, SITRAP built its membership base in hostile multinational company farms belonging to Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole and also in plantations owned by vehemently anti-union national companies such as the Acon Group who made sure that the union could not make the sufficient inroads needed in order to reach the density required to trigger recognition, by sacking members under any pretext. However, a significant breakthrough occurred in January, 2016 when, after an 18 year struggle, the Labour Reform Process Law was put onto the statute book. This landmark piece of legislation dramatically speeded up the glacial pace of Costa Rica’s labour code and enabled workers to bring claims of unfair dismissal to court within days and empowered judges to order immediate reinstatement pending a full merits hearing. At a stroke, the legislation deprived employers’ ability to arbitrarily dismiss trade unionists at will, safe in the knowledge that cases brought against them could take years to be heard. Unsurprisingly, private sector employers are lobbying furiously to have the law overturned.

The cumulative effects of SITRAP’s continuing membership drive, the space afforded to it by the passing of the new law, and the pressure being brought to bear by motivated consumers in European markets allowed the union to make members to such an extent that, after 9 months of negotiation, it was able to sign a recognition agreement in a Del Monte plantation just before the assembly, the first such agreement to be concluded since the 1980s. It was this that prompted ANEP’s General Secretary to comment on the historic significance of the moment.

Banana production in Costa Rica, and elsewhere in Latin America, faces an uncertain future. The purchasing power of European and North American retailers has squeezed the margins of the multinational producers who are no longer the dominant force that they once were. The downward pressure on costs has been passed on to workers who find themselves the victims of a race to the bottom as producers react to the price wars of major supermarkets, particularly in the UK. The huge mono-crop plantations, drenched in pesticides, are environmentally disastrous and are prone to disease. So far, the deadly fusarium wilt virus has been kept at bay in Latin America but if it takes hold, that could be the beginning of the end for the industry as we know it and explains why serious thought is now being given to multi-cropping and diversification away from the ubiquitous Cavendish banana that is intensively farmed throughout.

For the thousands of workers in the Costa Rican banana industry, it is essential that they have a collective voice that can be heard, however the industry develops. SITRAP’s re-emergence as a significant player is therefore vitally important and they deserve the continued support of unions like GMB, and UNISON who have also given valuable assistance, especially as so much of the fruit their members produce finds its way into the UK’s fruit bowls.  

ANEP have produced the video report of the event below, which includes contributions from the General Secretary of SITRAP, Didier Leiton, Alistair Smith of Banana Link, and Bert Schouwenburg, who represented the GMB at the meeting.

700 agricultural workers attend historic SITRAP assembly from Banana Link on Vimeo.



Bert Schouwenburg
11 February 2019

Costa Rica: the country that turns its back on the consequences of pineapple cultivation

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

The following comment was received from DELFINO.CR in Costa Rica on 23rd January 2019. It may now be a little out-of-date but its subject typifies the attitude of the Costa Rican government to the dangers of mono-cultivation and over-use of pesticides over the last two decades. Beware the country that internationally paints itself so green whilst at the same time turning a blind eye to the contamination and health risks it creates through its pineapple mono-cultivation.

Key words: Costa Rica; pineapple cultivation; pesticides (bromacil); water source contamination.

Costa Rica’s Constitutional Court ordered six institutions to initiate the clean-up of six water sources which supply residents of Río Cuarto de Alajuela and which were contaminated with the herbicide bromacil. It has been established that all of these institutions knew of the existence of complaints about pollution risks for various water sources in the affected communities and, well, they did nothing.

The declaration was made as a result of a protective measure imposed by the Associations of Aqueducts and Sewers of Santa Rita, La Tabla and Santa Isabel de Río Cuarto de Alajuela which published the following communication:

“The Magistrates declared with reference to the resource that for years the institutions involved – the Costa Rican Institute of Aqueducts and Sewers, the Administrative Environmental Court, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of the Environment and Energy, the Fitosanitary Service of State and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cattle Ranching – knew of the existence of complaints about the pollution risks in diverse springs in the affected communities, but despite that, they failed to comply with their obligation which was to coordinate the environmental action between the institutions and to exercise the precautionary principle necessary for this type of problem. What happened in this crisis of drinkable water was contamination by agro-chemicals in the Brenes, Nicrodal, La Flor del Acueducto de Santa Rita, la Flor del Acueducto de Santa Isabel, La Culebra and Nicolás Rodríguez springs.”

  • As a result of this, the listed institutions must immediately begin the process of cleansing and eliminating agro-chemical residues from the water sources which supply the communities of Santa Rita, La Tabla and Santa Isabel de Río Cuarto de Alajuela; it is well known that in the past these were contaminated with bromacil, but nobody did anything about it.
  • Pineapple plantations, pineapple plantations, pineapple plantations, and again! And the State looks away – again. Because as if the medicine hadn’t already been bitter enough to swallow, the day has come when the new edition of the ‘Cards on the Table’ programme, in which this time RT International decided to test the water and to remind us of the very high price that the country pays for its exports of pineapples.
  • The programme, which is in the round table dialogue style, includes the presence of a UNDP official in sustainable development and resilience, Kifah Sasa, environmentalist Mauricio Álvarez of the Ecologist Federation of Costa Rica, and the environmental lawyer and legislative advisor, Sofia Barquero. They discussed the consequences of the billions of dollars which enter the country from the cultivation of pineapples. These are consequences which everyone talks about but which we ignore, preferring to look in the other direction.
  • According to the UNDP data provided by Sasa, Costa Rica produces 50% of the fresh pineapple consumed in North America and 50% of that consumed in Europe. What makes it so attractive for the consumer is that what we produce is sweet enough for it to be marketed elsewhere. Twenty years ago, we used to split our tongues eating pineapples. Well now with our pineapples that doesn’t happen and it has become an export of preference. What happens is that now these consequences aren’t felt by our tongues but in the environmental impacts and the denunciations against bad labour practices which are associated with this cultivation.
  • “In Costa Rica the pineapple plantation which becomes the norm is the exception,” said Sofía Barquero in a warning that couldn’t be sharper: namely that by putting 58,000 hectares under pineapple production, we are trampling the environment underfoot. As well as the denunciations about bromacil and multiple pollutants associated with this mono-cultivation, we can add that last year the UNDP reported that between the years 2000 and 2015, 5,565.9 hectares of forest cover were lost to pineapple production, to which we should add the erosion of soil, the loss of cattle through the pineapple fly and the non-compliance with labour laws, already well-known.
  • In fact, a denunciation has been made this very week on the Twitter account of the Executive President of INAMU and the Ministry of the Condition of Women, Patricia Mora, which announces that: “The situation of women in many of the mono-cultivation plantations of our country (pineapple, banana, yucca and melon plantations) is one of absolute disrespect of their labour rights. Since I have been in the National Institute of Women, INAMU has held meetings with women workers in this sector who have presented me with their denunciations and looked for support in defence of their rights.”
  • Right at the beginning of this year we can tell you of the denunciations made by the workers of the Bellavista Packers on the northern border, who told us that they had been sacked for having been affiliated to the union, and that they had even been obliged to sign work agreements which RT International made known when it reported on pineapple cultivation in this green and democratic country.
  • According to UNDP data, a high percentage of the country’s pineapple plantation production is controlled by 40 large companies with enormous names such as Dole, Chiquita and Del Monte which are supposedly the easiest to control because of the power behind their name.
  • There are, however, the others, the small ones of which there are more than 1,400 and which are the most polluting and which fail to address denunciations. Those companies then sell to the large companies which in their turn can wash their hands of the responsibility, declaring that it is small ones that are guilty because they are the ones that don’t have the necessary technology to ensure that their agro-chemicals don’t contaminate the soil or that can’t pay appropriate wages, etc, etc.. And so, once again, they all wash their hands and turn their heads away.
  • This is ‘the price of the sweet fruits’, as the title of the German DW described it last year in its report on our country’s pineapple production. The report indicated that in Germany each fruit costs between 1 and 3 euros (between 700 and 2,000 colones) giving a total of 1 billion dollars that reach the state but not the wages of the workers, nor the cleanness of the rivers contaminated with bromacil. That is the issue that we must begin to see, without looking the other way, thereby genuinely calculating the true cost of the 2 million tonnes that we export every year.

Alarm as devastating banana fungus reaches the Americas

Chapter 2 / Tropical Fruits

The region produces most of the world’s banana exports — and the fungus affects the most popular commercial variety.

Jonathan Lambert

19 August 2019

Reproduced from Nature Briefing

A worker at a multi-national banana company selects bananas for export in Uraba, Colombia. [Credit: Luis Acosta/AFP/Getty]

A banana-killing fungus that has been laying waste to crops in Asia and Australia for decades is now in the Americas, which produce the majority of the world’s banana exports.

Colombia declared a national emergency on 8 August after laboratory results confirmed the presence of the fungus, known as Fusarium wilt tropical race 4 (TR4), within its borders. This marks the first confirmation of TR4 in the Americas. The Colombia Agricultural Institute (ICA), a federal agency tasked with overseeing agricultural health in the country, says that about 175 hectares have been affected so far.

Officials quarantined four farms on the Guajira Peninsula in the northern part of the country in June, when they first suspected that TR4 was killing banana plants in the region. But scientists now fear that the fungus has spread beyond the containment zone and could threaten banana production in the Americas for decades to come.

TR4 infects several varieties of banana and plantain, but is particularly harmful to the Cavendish, which is the main variety sold in grocery stores and accounts for the lion’s share of international exports. [Credit medianature.com]

“These epidemics develop slowly, so the [spread] will take some time,” says Randy Ploetz, a plant pathologist at the University of Florida in Homestead. “But eventually, it will not be possible to produce Cavendish for international trade.”

The TR4 strain — which started destroying Cavendish crops in Asia in the 1990s, then spread to Australia and, later, Africa — infects banana plants through the roots and spreads throughout the vascular system, starving the plant of water and nutrients. The fungus can be transmitted by moving infected plants from one area to another, or through water and soil.

It can’t be controlled with fungicides, so the main way of dealing with TR4 is to try to stop it spreading (see ‘In the Americas’). The ICA says that it has eradicated most of the plants from infected fields, but TR4 can linger in the soil for roughly 30 years.

“Soil is very difficult to contain,” says Fernando García-Bastidas, a plant pathologist at KeyGene in Wageningen, the Netherlands, who led the TR4 testing effort on the Colombian samples. “Who knows how many cars and people have entered that farm and carried

[the fungus]

elsewhere?” Containment efforts can slow the fungus’s spread, and Colombia is doing all it can, says García-Bastidas, but once TR4 arrives somewhere, it’s almost impossible to eradicate.

Nature | The Springer Nature Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

Nature Research, part of Springer Nature.
© 2019 Springer Nature Limited. All rights reserved

Serious abuses of labour rights in Costa Rica and Honduras

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

At the beginning of October this year (2019) Banana Link issued the following report.  We are grateful to Banana Link  for their work and reports.

Key words: Banana Link; labour rights; minimum wage; social insurance; exposure to hazardous agrochemicals; Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code; blocking of collective bargaining; Fyffes; ANEXCO; Suragroh.

“They never contributed to social insurance and now I will not be able to retire or finally rest after so many years spent on the plantations. I have to continue looking for work to survive.” – María Gómez (65) who worked for nearly 30 years as a supervisor at Melon Export SA

Since the summer of 2015, the Make Fruit Fair! campaign has collected evidence of very serious violations of core labour standards at specific Fyffes’ subsidiaries; ANEXCO in Costa Rica and Suragroh and Melon Export SA in Honduras, where a largely female workforce, reliant on temporary seasonal work, is particularly vulnerable.

These violations include: failure to pay minimum wages and social insurance (an estimated £2.5m in pay and social insurance has been withheld); exposure of workers to hazardous agrochemicals; failure to respect freedom of association including threats, harassment and sacking of union members; and blocking collective bargaining processes.

In the case of Suragroh, Make Fruit Fair partner Banana Link and the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) has alleged breaches of the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code for failure to respect unions and pay living wages, and Fyffes has refused to participate in local mediation to remedy these.

“I got pregnant, and they do not allow pregnancy” – Marys Suyapa Gómez, sacked for being pregnant after working at Suragroh for 15 years

The Honduran Labour Inspectorate has also found non-payment of minimum wages and other statutory benefits. Additionally, a 2015 report by the U.S. Department of Labour confirmed allegations that Suragroh failed to pay the minimum wage, among a lengthy list of other violations.

Workers are required to provide their own work equipment such as hoes, machetes and shoes, the costs of which can amount to an entire week’s income.

Workers are also exposed to hazardous chemicals, many reporting headaches, sickness and temperatures as a result, and report a lack of information about and training to avoid and be protected from the dangers of chemical exposure. In December 2015, about 100 women suffered poisoning, 14 of whom were hospitalised, after they were accidentally dropped off downwind of herbicide and chlorine spraying in an adjoining plot.

You can read more about working conditions at Suragroh here:

Meanwhile, at ANEXCO, dialogue facilitated by the Costa Rican Ministry of Labour has failed to provide a space in which local unions can negotiate with ANEXCO management and Fyffes, and the local unions report continued failure to comply with core labour standards enshrined in Costa Rican legislation.

The rights abuses at ANEXCO are the subject of an ongoing Make Fruit Fair urgent action launched in September 2015. The key demands of respect for labour rights and an end to harassment and discrimination against union members have yet to be met.

Both cases clearly illustrate that Fyffes is also in breach of OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises for the failure to “Respect the right of their employees to be represented by trade unions”.

“Fyffes in Honduras does not respect the fundamental rights of women workers; the majority of employees are women who have up to 26 years of work without social security rights or social benefits. We demand respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining.” – Iris Munguia, Coordinator, COLSIBA (the Regional Coordination of Latin American Banana & Agro-Industrial Workers’ Unions)

Banana Link and many of their partners from Europe and Latin America wrote to Fyffes Chairman, David McCann, in November last year asking him to take action to address these issues, but we received no response.

ANEXCO harasses and fires union members

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

The following is a report reproduced here by kind permission of Banana Link.
ANEXCO harasses and fires union members – update on our Urgent Action
November 2015

baThank you for supporting our recent urgent action appeal in support of union members at Costa Rican pineapple producer ANEXCO. More than 23​,000 emails have been sent to the company, calling on them to end harrassment of union members and to engage in constructive dialogue with the union SINTRAPEM (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores/as del Sector Privado Empresarial). This massive effort, plus several articles in the trade press and an intervention by the UK’s Ethical Trade Initiative combined to convince Fyffes of the need to try and resolve the issues we raised.

Initially, three union members were sacked shortly after the urgent action appeal was launched. However, the pressure against union members inside the plantation ​i​s reported to have diminished since then and a meeting at the Costa Rican Labour Ministry on 20th October generated an agreement to explore the potential for the reinstatement of these three most sacked workers.

Subsequently, a meeting in San José on 30th October – involving SINTRAPEM, COSIBA (the Costa Rican banana and pineapple union coordinating body), COLSIBA (the Latin American banana and agro industrial union coordinating body), Banana Link, ANEXCO and Fyffes – did not achieve the real breakthrough that was needed to put an end to the anti-union activities. But ANEXCO and Fyffes did, however, agree to another meeting to review the list of the union’s complaints, provisionally scheduled for 6th November.

Although there is not yet a satisfactory conclusion to our urgent action appeal, the progress made so far would not have been possible without your support. We will keep you updated.​

www.bananalink.org.uk
You can still add your voice. 
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Cocapples anyone?

Chapter 9 / The drug channel / Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

By Martin Mowforth for the TVOD website

Key words: Costa Rica; pineapple exports; cocaine.

As if problems of labour exploitation, community relations, political bribery, water and soil contamination are not serious enough for pineapple transnational companies, since 2018, and possibly before, shipments of the fresh fruit and processed fruit have become vehicles for cocaine smuggling operations.

(Photo courtesy by AFP / Spanish National Police )

In August 2018 the Spanish police announced that they had seized 67 kilograms of cocaine stuffed inside dozens of hollowed-out pineapples at Madrid’s main wholesale fruit and vegetable market. The shipment had been offloaded at the Portuguese port of Setubal from a ship from Costa Rica. They had then been transported overland to Madrid. The police statement said each pineapple had been “perfectly hollowed out and stuffed with compact cylinders containing 800-1,000 grams of cocaine” and was coated with wax to conceal the smell of the chemicals in the drugs and to avoid its detection (Tico Times, 2018).

In February 2020, in Costa Rica’s Atlantic coast port of Limón, a shipment of over 5,000 one kilogram bags of cocaine (with an estimated value of 126 million euros) was exposed in a container full of canopy plants which were destined for Rotterdam. This was the largest drugs bust in Costa Rica’s history (de Geir, 2020). Three months later, the police in Costa Rica intercepted 1,250 one kilo parcels of cocaine hidden in a shipment of pineapple juice which was waiting to be shipped to the port of Rotterdam. Other 2020 drugs interceptions were also made in January (amongst a shipment of bananas), March (pineapples) and April (bananas) NL Times, 2020).

In August 2020, another container of pineapples destined for Rotterdam was seized by the Costa Rican Drug Control Police (PCD) with $22 million worth of cocaine hidden inside it – 918 packages totalling approximately one ton. The Minister of Security absolved the fruit exporting company of any blame, explaining that the drugs were introduced at some point between the company and the port (Allen 2020).

In February this year (2021), the PCD reported another seizure of cocaine in the Atlantic coast port of Moín, on this occasion including 2,000 packages of cocaine (approximately two tons). Again the packages were hidden in a shipment of pineapples and were destined for Belgium (Agence France-Presse, 2021).

A person holding a cocaine-stuffed pineapple, seized by Spanish police in Madrid. Spenish police said on August 27, 2018, they have seized 67 kilos (148 pounds) of cocaine found inside dozens of hollowed out pineapples at Madrid’s main wholesale fruit and vegetable market. ((AFP Photo / Spanish national police.)

Not surprisingly, Costa Rica now requires that all shipments of fresh pineapple and its related products should be scanned at Costa Rican ports by the General Directorate of Customs (Zúñiga, 2021). The requirement was made by the Costa Rican government in order to defend the reputation and positive image of the country, things that have already been well-tarnished by the Costa Rican pineapple industry.

Sources:

Tico Times (2018) ‘Cocaine-stuffed pineapples shipped from Costa Rica to Europe’, 5th August, San José. (Sourced from Agence France-Presse.)

De Geir, J. (2020) ‘Video: Costa Rica’s biggest-ever cocaine bust was headed to Netherlands’, NL Times, 17th February (Amsterdam).

NL Times (2020) ‘Costa Rican authorities seize 1,250 kilos cocaine destined for Rotterdam’, NL Times, 13th May (Amsterdam).

Allen, A. (2020) ‘Authorities Seize $22 Million Worth of Cocaine Found in Pineapple Shipment’, ANDNOWUKNOW, (www.andnowuknow.com), 21st August, Sacramento, California.

Agence France-Presse (2021) ‘Costa Rica seizes two tons of cocaine hidden with pineapples’, 5th February, Paris.

Zúñiga, A. (2021) ‘Costa Rica draws the line: All pineapple shipments checked for drugs’, Tico Times, 9th February, San José.

 

 

Banana prices have always been too low

Chapter 2 / Tropical Fruits

The following short article appeared in a Banana Link blog dated 12th December 2020. It was written by Angelica Hicks and Emily Gove who work for Equal Exchange Produce, a US for-profit organisation, similar in aims and practices to the UK’s Traidcraft and the UK’s Equal Exchange Trading. We are grateful to Angelica, Emily and Equal Exchange for permission to reproduce the article here and we urge our readers to visit the Equal Exchange website at:  equalexchange.coop . We are also grateful to Banana Link whose website is at: www.bananalink.org.uk .

By Angelica Hicks and Emily Gove
Equal Exchange Produce

December 2020

In the past two days, Del Monte, Dole and Chiquita have announced their intentions to add surcharges to their banana contracts in the US, following extensive damage to their operations in Central America as a result of hurricanes Eta and Iota. The news is making ripples across fresh produce publications and, very likely, produce industry boardrooms, and for good reason. It has the potential to force a conversation that is long overdue.

Equal Exchange Produce, a Fairtrade, organic importer in the US, has worked with small-scale farmer cooperatives for 15 years. Our banana partners work in Ecuador and Peru, and supply a relatively specialised market within the US, largely made up of independent, cooperative and natural foods stores. As a brand, we have often been alone in raising the topic of exploitative banana prices, in a market demanding both availability and cosmetics at a price that sustains neither of the two.

The reality is this: bananas are a labour-intensive crop. Any banana you find in a grocery store in the US[1] – whether conventional or organic – has been cut down from its plant in a massive cluster, carried on a shoulder, pulled to a pack shed, washed multiple times, cut into perfect bunches, stickered, packed and inspected, all by hand. The many people that contribute to the banana production process are also those that bear the consequences of low prices, which large retailers and conventional banana companies push down the supply chain until they land on the shoulders of farmers and workers.

The devastating hurricanes in Central America, which have destroyed upwards of 12,000 hectares in banana cultivation and impacted livelihoods across the region, are an important reason to pay more for bananas now. Still, it’s a shame that it takes a crisis of this magnitude to force a meaningful price increase, despite the well-documented externalised costs borne almost entirely by producer communities.

In the US consumers are conditioned to think that bananas are inherently cheap. What they don’t know is the impact of artificially low prices, or the precarious position in which they place farmers and workers.

Equal Exchange will continue to push for sustainable prices across the industry. We hope this moment signals a turning point in the industry conversation about the price – and value – of bananas.

[1]  And in the UK, we might add.

Supermarket banana pricing policies

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

The following item written by Alistair Smith appeared in the Banana Link Newsletter of 7th December 2021. Alistair is Banana Link’s International Coordinator and has worked with tropical fruit producer organisations in many parts of the world. We are grateful to him for granting us permission to reproduce this section of the Banana Link Newsletter in The Violence of Development website. Although the article is a general one making no specific mention of Central America, it clearly has implications for Central American banana producers and the organisations that represent them. Banana Link’s website is at: www.bananalink.org.uk

By Alistair Smith

7th December 2021

Keywords: supermarkets; banana prices; shared responsibility; World Banana Forum.

 

Does the Aldi banana price rise mean we are turning the corner?

For the best part of two decades, German hard discount retailer Aldi, present in thirty countries worldwide, has more or less set the benchmark price for fresh bananas in the European market. On 1st December the long-awaited ‘white smoke’ on the 2022 contract price finally appeared to have gone up after particularly protracted and controversial negotiations with suppliers. The contract price for next year has risen quite significantly, by 9 euro cents per box compared to 2021; but this was the lowest price ever seen, says Banana Link International Coordinator, Alistair Smith.

In the second half of the year, most of the leading Latin American, Caribbean and African producers’ and exporters’ organisations had denounced with increasing force the hypocrisy of a major buyer that wants more and more social and environmental standards to be met whilst paying less and less in its annual negotiations. Aldi’s buyers were, quite rightly, criticised publicly for not being in tune with their corporate responsibility colleagues.

The rise, which is estimated to be from an average of 11.50 euros per box this year to an average 13.30 in 2022, sounds significant, but as Reefertrends, who reported the move, stated: “While the increase has been broadly welcomed, whether the value at retail can cover the minimum price demanded by governments and producers alike is contingent on by how much trade related supply chain costs have also risen”. The Ecuadorian exporters have reported 50 to 60 % increases in shipping costs in recent months, and these costs can account for up to 25-30 % of the landed price in European ports.

So, the jury is still out as to whether this increase for 2022 really covers more of the costs of production than the 2021 historical low.

Aldi accepts it has ‘shared responsibility’

What is significant, though, regardless of the actual figures per supply chain is that the retailer has broken through its image of arrogance, of not listening to producers and of driving a race to the bottom industry-wide through lower and lower contract prices. For the first time, the company is now speaking in public of its support for the concept of ‘shared responsibility’ between producers and sellers and is part of a group of German retailers that is wanting to ensure living wages are paid to all workers in its banana supply chains. From 2023, Banana Link understands that Aldi will follow the UK-based retailer Tesco in rewarding those producers who are paying living wages.

In the case of both Tesco and Aldi, an open question remains about the role of independent trade unions in verifying and negotiating to close living wage gaps and beyond. The living wage benchmarks produced in recent years are just a guide to the lowest wages that anybody should earn to guarantee a basic standard of living. They are not a ceiling, but a floor. The next key step will be to see how the big buyers demonstrate to their customers that living wages are indeed paid.

A global banana costs and value distribution observatory

The World Banana Forum (WBF), with seed funding from the French government and the FAO of the United Nations, has been working since late 2020 on a methodology to make the costs of sustainable production and the distribution of value along the chain more transparent. The controversy over the Aldi price and retail buyer behaviour in general has hampered the producers’ will to be transparent about the detailed costs of production, based on a real fear that powerful buyers will use the figures to squeeze the growers even more.

Now that, for the first time, there is an apparent recognition of the reality of rising costs by Europe’s biggest buyer, the Global Banana Observatory should be able to move forward in piloting its methods of making transparent costs, margins and taxes along the chain. The hope is that this can become a real tool for counting in costs like living wages and other ‘hidden costs’ in pricing along the chain.

Banana Link encourages Aldi to keep moving in the new direction that yesterday’s white smoke appears to signal. Other buyers now need to follow the lead of two of the WBF’s leading retail members. We could then be shouting from the rooftops that the game is really changing. The joint statement by WBF on the concerted global effort towards living wages for all banana workers will then be seen to have real meaning.

As it stands today, Banana Link gives a cautious welcome to the move. The proof of the pudding will be in whether working conditions, wages, industrial relations and a whole range of very negative environmental impacts change for employees across the global industry.

Alistair Smith
6 December 2021

Freedom and fairness for Fyffes workers

Chapter 2 / Case studies / Tropical Fruits

screen-shot-2017-03-26-at-10-52-52The following article focuses on banana production with an examination of the practices of the major importing company Fyffes. I am grateful to Banana Link for permission to reproduce extracts from their article which appeared in the Make Fruit Fair! Newsletter of 23rd January 2017.

 Key words: Fyffes; labour rights; tropical fruit production; fair trade; supermarkets.

The Make Fruit Fair! Campaign is calling on Fyffes – the number one importer of bananas to Europe, and among the largest global marketer for Supersweet pineapples and winter season melons – to respect the rights of workers in its global supply chains. Read more about the campaign below.

Serious abuses of labour rights in Costa Rica and Honduras

screen-shot-2017-03-26-at-10-52-58“They never contributed to social insurance and now I will not be able to retire or finally rest after so many years spent on the plantations. I have to continue looking for work to survive.” – María Gómez (65) who worked for nearly 30 years as a supervisor at Melon Export SA.

Since the summer of 2015, the Make Fruit Fair! campaign has collected evidence of very serious violations of core labour standards at specific Fyffes’ subsidiaries: ANEXCO in Costa Rica and Suragroh and Melon Export SA in Honduras, where a largely female workforce, reliant on temporary seasonal work, is particularly vulnerable.

These violations include: failure to pay minimum wages and social insurance (an estimated £2.5m in pay and social insurance have been withheld); exposure of workers to hazardous agrochemicals; failure to respect freedom of association including threats, harassment and sacking of union members; and blocking collective bargaining processes.

In the case of Suragroh, Make Fruit Fair partners Banana Link and the International Union of Foodworkers (IUF) have alleged breaches of the UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative Base Code for failure to respect unions and pay living wages, and Fyffes has refused to participate in local mediation to remedy these.

screen-shot-2017-03-26-at-10-53-04 “I got pregnant, and they do not allow pregnancy” – Marys Suyapa Gómez, sacked for being pregnant after working at Suragroh for 15 years

The Honduran Labour Inspectorate has also found non-payment of minimum wages and other statutory benefits. Additionally, a 2015 report by the U.S. Department of Labour confirmed allegations that Suragroh failed to pay the minimum wage, among a lengthy list of other violations.

Workers are required to provide their own work equipment such as hoes, machetes and shoes, the costs of which can amount to an entire week’s income.

Workers are also exposed to hazardous chemicals, many reporting headaches, sickness and high temperatures as a result, and report a lack of information about and training to avoid and be protected from the dangers of chemical exposure. In December 2015, about 100 women suffered poisoning, 14 of whom were hospitalised, after they were accidentally dropped off downwind of herbicide and chlorine spraying in an adjoining plot.

You can read more about working conditions at Suragroh here:

Meanwhile, at ANEXCO, dialogue facilitated by the Costa Rican Ministry of Labour has failed to provide a space in which local unions can negotiate with ANEXCO management and Fyffes, and the local unions report continued failure to comply with core labour standards enshrined in Costa Rican legislation.

The rights abuses at ANEXCO are the subject of an ongoing Make Fruit Fair urgent action launched in September 2015. The key demands of respect for labour rights and an end to harassment and discrimination against union members have yet to be met.

Both cases clearly illustrate that Fyffes is also in breach of OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises for the failure to “Respect the right of their employees to be represented by trade unions”.

“Fyffes in Honduras does not respect the fundamental rights of women workers; the majority of employees are women who have up to 26 years of work without social security rights or social benefits. We demand respect for freedom of association and collective bargaining.” – Iris Munguía, Coordinator, COLSIBA (the Regional Coordination of Latin American Banana & Agro-Industrial Workers’ Unions)

Banana Link and many of our partners from Europe and Latin America wrote to Fyffes Chairman, David McCann, in November last year asking him to take action to address these issues, but received no response.

Despite Fyffes’ claim on its website that “if something isn’t working, we change the way we do it”, the company has failed to take responsibility in Costa Rica and Honduras.

No company, especially a company that professes to respect the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, should benefit from the appalling abuses suffered by those at the bottom of their supply chain.

An alliance of civil society organisations and trade unions, including unions in Costa Rica and Honduras, are calling on Fyffes to ensure that local plantation management

  • ends the discrimination of union members at Anexco (Costa Rica) and Suragroh (Honduras)
  • recognises unions at both Anexco (Costa Rica) and Suragroh (Honduras) and engages in collective bargaining with these unions to provide opportunity for workers to be represented in negotiations on pay and working conditions on plantations.

We are also calling for shareholders and directors with responsibility for Fyffes

  • to establish and implement a global company wide policy to ensure the respect of workers’ rights throughout its supply chains, including the right to join an independent trade union and for unions to engage in collective bargaining

screen-shot-2017-03-26-at-10-53-18“Fyffes must take responsibility for ensuring that their local managements in Costa Rica and Honduras recognise and enter into good faith negotiations with local unions and that company-wide freedom of association and collective bargaining is respected at every level.“ – Ron Oswald, General Secretary, International Union of Foodworkers.

Fyffes and Fairtrade

Fyffes are a significant trader of Fairtrade certified bananas in the UK. The Fairtrade mark is given to individual products not entire companies or their business practices. In the case of Fyffes only some of their produce is Fairtrade certified – the produce from the Fyffes subsidiaries in Costa Rica and Honduras is not covered by Fairtrade certification. Although Fairtrade Trader Standards do place ethical requirements on Fyffes, these requirements only cover farms that are part of certified supply chains, not those on non-certified farms.

Fyffes and UK supermarkets

We believe that supermarkets have a responsibility for ensuring ethical standards are respected throughout all of their supply chains. Most supermarkets in the UK buy some, or all, of their bananas through Fyffes. We, therefore, believe that these supermarkets have a responsibility for raising our concerns about labour rights with Fyffes. We have contacted all the UK supermarkets and the majority have responded and are in dialogue with Fyffes. But two supermarkets – Asda and Lidl – have not responded to our communications.

Relevant websites:

Banana Link – www.bananalink.org.uk

Make Fruit Fair! – www.makefruitfair.org

Ethical Trading Initiative – www.ethicaltrade.org

International Union of Food Workers (IUF) – www.iuf.org

Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) – www.fairtrade-advocacy.org