Mapping agribusiness – Where do bananas come from?
Results from this map are from a survey I performed with several family members, friends, and fellow students. I asked each participant to locate on the map where they believed their banana originated from. Each icon on the map represents a participant’s response. The findings demonstrate that while many people correctly identified bananas coming from the southern hemisphere, knowledge of the exact region is less precise.
Where do bananas come from?
Candevish Bananas were initially planted around 6,000 years ago in the Malayan peninsula and throughout Southeast Asia's island states. These early banana growers began domesticating and hybridizing a variety of bananas for small-scale use. During the 15th century, Portuguese sugar plantation commercial operations expanded to include banana growing across the Americas. In Central and South America, the plantain variant quickly became a staple crop.
A farmer by the name of Joseph Paxton initially planted the Candevish variety in the garden of London's Crystal Palace, which finally yielded fruit and was first enjoyed by the Candevish family. Banana production for the Gros Michel variety increased to a global scale as a result of the industrial revolution, and it began to be distributed all over the world. Though production was quickly interrupted because to a root-wilting illness that destroyed Latin American plantations. The Cavendish cultivar was later chosen because it had proven to be disease-resistant.
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In 1997, the World Conservation Union reported that “one out of eight plants surveyed internationally is potentially at risk, with extinction rates presently at 1,000 species a year”. The decline of the Gros Michel and the vulnerability of the Candevish variety is part of a larger trend of monoculture crops that, due to their sterility and genetic uniformity, are unable to respond to or resist sickness. Workers on monocultural farms across the world are forced to take extensive measures when growing the crop or use pesticides liberally, endangering their own health and further harming the surrounding ecology.
In Central and South America, the plantation model has led to the destruction of areas originally covered by the biodiverse rainforest. In the long term, monocrop cultivars such as candevish are unable to tolerate rapidly changing climatic circumstances. Efforts to sustain the cavendish plantation paradigm are exemplary of biocapitalism, in which "living beings are increasingly considered as "programmable manufacturing systems". This model of production unsustainable by design, since it disregards the requirements of the local people and the ecosystem services. Biocapitalism may be found within a wider economic paradigm that condones widespread environmental degradation and the dehumanization of its labor force.
As the Panama disease rages on, companies like Chiquita will be forced to reconsider their production models and consumers will be disillusioned by the sudden loss of a seemingly limitless supply.
Today, the Cavendish variety has emerged as one of the world's most important commercial crops. Bananas are now farmed on plantations, with major multinational corporations such as Chiquita Brands International and Dole Fruit Company handling the trade. This monocultural crop production model leads to countless human rights abuses and grossly unjust labor conditions for locals. Poor management, and repressed unionization efforts are all common in key export areas such as Ecuador, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and others.
The purpose of this mapping project is to expose the labor networks that underpin our everyday acts of consumption. With increased output comes increased land grabs by multinational investors, a coercive process involving unequal power relations. Each symbol represents a banana plantation site, its multinational patrons, the reported working conditions, and worker testimonies.
(click on icon for information of each plantation)
THE JOURNEY OF CAVENDISH
2022, Ceramic bisque, glaze
This investigation concludes with a sculptural work aimed at bridging the gap between Candevish producers and consumers. This piece draws attention to the atrocities committed by Chiquita/United Fruit Company, the gap in global awareness concerning the company’s history, and the industry's continuous use of coercion and violence to maintain its current operations.