Fair Bananas: Farmers, Workers and Consumers Strive to Change an Industry

Henry J. Frundt
Fair Bananas: Farmers, Workers and Consumers Strive to Change an Industry
Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-1865-2836-3, 243 pp.

The author envisions a 'convergence among small farmers, banana workers, union leaders and activist NGOs' (p.5) around the concept and practice of a fair trade in bananas. Frundt defines 'fair bananas' from a consumer point of view as fruit sold with 'the assurance that the environment remains healthy and producers receive an adequate income for their role in the overall system of production and distribution' (p.5).

His central thesis - that an alliance of workers, farmers and consumers, could deliver a fair banana trade - is compelling, and the potential role of such a convergence is well argued. Indeed, such alliances could be forged in most supply chains that link Southern workers and farmers to Northern consumers. What the book fails to convey adequately, however, is that precisely such an alliance was born in the early 1990s and is very much alive and well today.

The small farmers of the Eastern Caribbean, organised through the Windward Island Farmers' Association, small farmers in Ecuador, the Latin American banana workers' unions, and a broad platform of civil-society organisations in Europe and - later in the 1990s - in North America came together to actively promote change in this emblematic industry. This alliance has promoted engagement with the major industry players - initially the big fruit companies, then more recently the major retailers - around the key social, environmental, and economic issues that negatively affect workers and small farmers.

The organisation with which I work, Banana Link, has played a leading role in facilitating the emergence of this alliance. We can confirm that Frundt's model is valid and that the process he describes is one that has brought us to the stage we have now reached. At the end of 2009, a Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Sustainable Banana Production and Trade was due to be launched, with the participation of fruit and retail companies, governments, UN agencies, and the civil-society alliance that has driven the creation of this unique forum. It owes its existence entirely to the persistence over many years of the organised workers, small farmers, and concerned consumers in setting and sticking to our agenda of socially and environmentally sustainable production and fairer international trade.

Where Frundt's analysis is particularly valuable is his dissection of the dilemmas facing those who have stepped into the breach to create an alternative, fair banana market. Chapter 12 on fair trade and freedom of association is particularly relevant to current debates between those involved in the worker-farmer-consumer alliance and the Fairtrade certification movement. If workers in certified plantations are not free to organise, they cannot even start to determine their own development through the use of the Fairtrade premium. If they do not earn a living wage, then how long will consumers accept this as fair trade? Other authors have started to question the credibility of Fairtrade certification in the situation where large numbers of workers are employed, but Frundt exposes this potential fault-line much more explicitly.

For the general reader there is plenty of material that is rich and easy to digest. The chapters on the environmental effects of monoculture banana production and the resilience of the independent trade unions, for example, are a particularly useful contribution. The fact that the banana industry has, historically, had some of the strongest private-sector unions in Latin America - not least because of the harshness of the exploitation by the fruit companies - does mean that the building of an alliance in this sector is easier than in others where union organisation is weak or non-existent. This aspect could have benefited from analysis.

Although there are a few inaccuracies concerning dates and statistics, these do not invalidate any of the narrative description of the situation on the ground. What is harder for the non-academic reader to digest, however, are some of the author's more theoretical excursions, especially when these passages are dispersed throughout the solid narrative description of the banana industry.

At times, the historical sequencing of two important stories - the fair-trade movement and the European Union's banana-import regime - can be a little hard to follow. Frundt cites sources close to both stories, including Windward Island farmers, Latin American union leaders, and European NGOs. These sources help to elucidate the issues, but the real dynamic of the existing movement to create a more sustainable banana economy does not emerge as clearly as it could through the telling of these two stories.

The author's conclusion that 'fair bananas have become an invitation for supporters to unite structures, networks and identity and jointly respond' (p. 221) is completely valid, but it does not take into account the extent to which supporters have been doing this for years. An analysis of the very significant market penetration of Fairtrade-certified bananas in, for example, the UK, Switzerland, and Finland, and an analysis of how that was achieved, would have enabled readers to understand the crucial relationship between a strong network focused on a common goal and the level of public awareness of the issues and alternatives which this network is seeking to present to the world.

Provided that readers bear in mind that Frundt's visionary challenge is already being taken up by an alliance which ranges from former plantation-worker co-operatives in the Philippines and Ghanaian banana workers through to US NGOs and trade unions from France to Peru, then the book can be recommended to readers involved in development practice or policy making on the issue of product chains, as well as to activists looking for models that work.