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Banana Split : To Eat or Not to Eat
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Carris, Lorri M. Jackson, Nancy L. |
| Copyright Year | 2010 |
| Abstract | Narrator: Th is is a conversation between Ethan Brown, the chairman of the fi ctitious major fruit company Integrated Fruit, and Bill Snowe, a banana breeder in one of the company's research stations in Central America. Th e conversation takes place in the 1970s. Ethan Brown was dedicated to making positive changes in Integrated Fruit, but the company was struggling fi nancially, faced with intense competition and a backlash in the form of increased regulation from a Latin American government. Bill Snowe had been breeding bananas for the company for many years, was widely regarded as an expert on banana cultivation, and was also well known for his empathy for the banana workers. Bill Snowe: You know, Ethan, the longer I work on developing a better banana for the U.S. market, the more I wonder about the whole enterprise. How did we end up in the business of selling such a fragile fruit that lasts only a couple of weeks, has to be picked when it's green and transported thousands of miles in refrigerated ships to prevent ripening, and then ripened artifi cially? Ethan Brown: And consumers are accustomed to inexpensive bananas—they cost less per pound than apples or oranges that are grown in the U.S. Th e narrow profi t margin is killing the company. Bill Snowe: What if we could charge more for bananas? Th e company would make more money, but would the banana workers get paid more? Ethan Brown: (sighing) I know how you feel about the treatment of banana workers. Integrated Fruit has been criticized for exploitation ever since the company's founder, Major Streif, discovered that he could make a lot of money by growing bananas along the railroad lines he was building in Costa Rica in the 1870s. He built the rail in exchange for lots of cheap land, courtesy of the Costa Rican government. What I've never understood is why the company acquired so much land, when most of it wasn't being used to grow bananas. Bill Snowe: It took a lot of land to grow bananas in the tropics back then. Most of the nutrients in tropical soils are bound up in the vegetation. Many of those nutrients are lost when the rainforest is cleared to grow crops like bananas. And then when you grow the same crop on the same land year after year, you quickly use up what nutrients are … |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/banana_split.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
