Dole Bananas Commodity Chain

The Michoacan state in Mexico has become the world’s largest producer of avocadoes. Although this vegetable is grown on farms throughout this state, it is also tied to an integral network of trade and export to countries across the globe. In this essay, I will argue that like any commodity chain study, the production of the organic Hass avocado has an intricate production process, which for my commodity chain study begins in Uruapan, Mexico a town in the state of Michoacan. This analysis has indicated the crucial underlying links to trade, labour, and demand that the export of this vegetable has created throughout North America

The Brazilian acai berry has been a food staple for low income families for years and a cultural symbol for generations. This berry is vital in Brazil, where it is farmed and, until recently had a relatively small market. However, after an Oprah interview the demand for acai has become an international affair. The rising demand has created a free market; however the once inexpensive food staple has become too expensive for the low income families. This report will analyse the current markets advantages and disadvantages, followed by two possible government intervention models. The examined interventions will be export tariff and price ceiling.

Patel concludes that these systems favor the consumers rather than the producers. He uses Mexican corn as an example. The price of corn in the Mexican market collapsed due to U.S imports. The U.S corn farmers were significantly subsidized by their government, and the poor Mexican farmers had no way to compete. Patel accuses America of using its economic and political power to strong-arm Mexico and other countries under the guise of free trade agreements. With all of the evidence Patel presents on this topic, any reader would have a difficult time disagreeing with this assertion.

We eat bananas almost every day; however, most of us do not really know where these fruits come from. In Banana Cultures, John Soluri focuses on the relationship between banana production in Honduras, especially in the North Coast between roughly 1870 and 1975, and banana consumption in the U. S.. He focuses on growing, protecting, transporting, and mass marketing of bananas. John Soluri integrates Agroecology, anthropology, political economy, and history in order to trace the symbolic growth of the banana industry. The author admits that his work is highly interdisciplinary, as a desirable trait in the academic world. The study incorporates a wide range of sources, including manuscript census data from Honduras, fruit company records, published scientific records, Honduran and U.S government correspondence, oral testimonies, and ephemera from U.S mass culture. Throughout his work, he combines elements of geography, biology, social history, foreign affairs, and environmental history. Soluri also looks at labor practices and worker’s lives, changing gender roles on the banana plantations, and the effects of pesticides in the Honduran environment and people. His central argument is that United States consumption of bananas causes major social, political, and environmental change in Honduras. In addition, he looks at the banana pathogens, the ways the United States treated these fungal diseases, and the terribly detrimental effects these new treatments had on the farmers on

Banana is a commodity that is widely used worldwide. Bananas are neither too extravagant, nor too expensive meaning that anyone and any level of socio-economic status can purchase them, from the very poor to the very wealthy. Bananas can be found at any brand name store, farmers market, or flea market. Bananas are commodities that are highly valued, traded, and desired. The success of the banana can be attributed to the fact that it can be grown and harvested all year long in different parts of the world. The success lies in the mass production, distribution and consumption of these goods. However, there is an ugly reality people are exploited, countries and people are complete dependent economically on bananas, and countries and terrain are destroyed by those corporations that benefit the most from the distribution of bananas.

In the book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (2008), Dan Koeppel talks about the historical background of banana. He also talks about its’ importance to African farmers and its’ importance to Latin America and Asia in economic terms. He describes that a disease called blight has caused serious threats to banana crops, as it is rapidly destroying the banana crops around the world (Koeppel, 2008). In this book, the author describes the role of two mega companies; Dole and Chiquita. They are committing massacres in the name of producing cheap banana. In Latin, America Chiquita is exploiting the labor. It also supports

In source one, the graph shows the value of a banana sold in the UK and how the total is split between the different hands involved. Although this source is very factual is has a deeper meaning than just numbers. The banana is one of the cheapest fruit sold in supermarkets, even though they come from thousands of kilometers away. The way our world has made transportation so fast, cheap, and available allows these banana’s to sit on our shelves. The transportation of the fruit has the highest value at four pence where the total value is twelve pence. The sale of the bananas at such a low cost is due to cheap transportation, the supply of the fruit being higher than the demand, and the low wages of the workers. The force of global transportation has made goods and services like banana’s more readily available.

The case provides a vehicle for analyzing strategic, contextual, and ethical challenges underlying Chiquita 's presence in Colombia, a primary global source for bananas. The case highlights the trade-offs that Chiquita made while paying protection money to ensure business continuity and employee protection. Historic information tracks the evolution of the company from its early focus on owning plantations; growing, importing, and distributing bananas; sourcing, marketing, and distribution, to "downstream" value-chain activities that were more

The shortage in Venezuela has increased. People must wait for hours to buy milk, but in powder because the other is not available. There is a shortage of cheese, meet, chicken, flour, sugar, oil, rice, coffee, toilet paper, diapers, detergent, and shampoo. In other words, basic products that are important for everyday life are not available. In Venezuela, there is no food because the government destroyed the Venezuelan oil production. To steal more and with the oil at a hundred dollars, the government preferred to import food from outside selling it in their distribution networks at unreal prices to end with private companies that they cannot compete with. Importing food with government money was a business that made many corrupt rich. However,

A perpetual race to the bottom for the lowest prices has made the banana industry today synonymous with global issues such as agrochemical abuse, pollution, forest depletion, unethical employment standards, gender inequality and even political corruption (Cohen). How can a harmless fruit be the symbol for all these global issues? Cohen in “Global issues for Breakfast” suggests that bananas are now such a common, inexpensive western commodity that, “we often forget where they come from and how they got here.” Although it may be easy to only blame corporations like Dole and Chiquita for the state of the banana industry, ultimately, consumers are responsible to make ethical purchases of fair trade and organic bananas because of the environmental and humanitarian costs associated with the traditional

This combined with the cultural and geographical distances (Freidberg, 2003, p. 33) has resulted in “homogenisation of the supply chain” in Africa (Freidberg, 2003, p. 34). The major vegetable suppliers are primarily large white-run farms. The author calls them “Benign dictators” (Freidberg, 2003, p. 33). These companies do not only have capacity to supply large quantities of vegetables but are also culturally similar to the supermarket buyers.

The banana industry has been met with much hardship since its establishment, and Colombia is no stranger to those hardships. The total production in Colombia is estimated at 95 million boxes a year, generating around 700 million dollars in 2012. Banana represents 3.0% of Colombia 's total exports and 6.0% of non-traditional exports, which generates 0.4% of the country 's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Colombian banana exporters are the third biggest in Latin America. In 2009, 24.21% of the production was sent to the United States and Canada, 62.26% to the European Union and 13.55% to other countries. The production of export bananas takes place in two different: Urabá, and Santa Marta. Between 2009 and 2010, Colombia was reported as the country with the third highest Fairtrade income, with approximately $62 million USD. In order to maintain a high form of production, banana farmers would often neglect important matters such as environmental standards and human working conditions as the path to a cleaner farming and safer working conditions is not the most cost-effective form of production. However, the integration of fair trade in the banana world has directly greatly modified the banana industry. Along with the implication of fair trade the environment has been made one of the top priorities with ensuring farming is done so by means that will allow the land to regenerate and even to promote healthy environmental initiatives. The farmers

Most of the products traded are agricultural (with some processed products traded in a few countries), but the Government of Colombia is looking at the possibility of introducing a commodity exchange for emeralds. The trading possibilities offered by the exchanges vary widely. Most provide a forum for the trade in physical commodities, but some also enable forward trading; in Colombia, the exchange also trades the Acredit@ part of warehouse receipts (in Latin America, warehouse receipts consist of two parts, one which gives rights to the commodities, and one which is used for credit purposes). The creation of a commodity futures exchange was proposed by a major private sector group in Chile in the late 1980s; the proposed exchange would trade in domestic food-grains and in fishmeal, but plans for it have not yet been finalised. In Paraguay, the Government considered the possibilities for the introduction of an exchange. Progress towards the introduction of an exchange is quite advanced in the Dominican Republic; it is planned to introduce warehouse receipt trading for beans and coffee. In Venezuela, a group already active in trading warehouse receipts over-the-counter is also working on the creation of an exchange.

On behalf of the ACP countries, we want to endorse and defend the European’s union tariff regime. Based on the Lomé Convention, the EU and ACP trade agreements should be based on cooperation and partnership. In addition, the EU has a moral responsibility to support banana production in ACP countries due to the involvement of millions of families in this activity, and thus in their socio-economic stability. To support, this decision we would like to argue that the EU is supporting the true high quality banana farmers of the ACP countries (Shah, 2010). In contrast, banana production is lead by American

There are several factors that have influenced the many decisions that we make in terms of the things that we eat. The government, scientists, corporations, and globalization all have affected the price, content, as well as the choice of foods that we can buy at supermarkets. A lot of people don’t know that each one of those factors has aided in the creation of each effect. First, we will explore how globalization has directly impacted the price of the foods that we eat. Second, we will discuss the ways in which scientists and corporations have both played a role in the things that are put into our foods. Lastly, we will touch base on the ways in which the government has played a role in all of the effects but specifically how they have controlled the choice of foods that we buy. All of these factors are connected through certain laws and legislation but they all differ in their impacts on what we eat and the prices of those foods.