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Banana cultivation is a major employer of rural labor as it is a labor-intensive industry. In Dominica, it is the second largest employer after the government, providing work for 6,000 farmers with another 700 employed at boxing plants. In St. Lucia, it provides employment for about 10,000 workers. In St. Vincent, there are about 5,000 banana ...
In 1876, a New York-based sea captain named Lorenzo Dow Baker returned from a voyage to the Orinoco River, and stopping in Jamaica bought 160 stems of bananas in the hopes that he could recoup losses from his voyage by selling them in Philadelphia. His gambit was successful, and he quickly began shipping from Jamaica to North America.
A banana plantation in St. Lucia. The banana industry is an important part of the global industrial agrobusiness. About 15% of the global banana production goes to export and international trade for consumption in Western countries. [1] They are grown on banana plantations primarily in the Americas. [2]
Peasant banana producers focus their attention on the popular Cavendish banana, as these are the fruit of choice on markets in Europe. In the Caribbean, and especially in Dominica where this sort of cultivation is widespread, holdings are in the 1-2 acre range. In many cases the farmer earns additional money from other crops, from engaging in ...
Banana plantations, as well as growing the fruit, may also package, process, and ship their product directly from the plantation to worldwide markets.Depending on the scope of the operation, a plantation's size may vary from a small family farm operation to a corporate facility encompassing large tracts of land, multiple physical plants, and many employees.
Banana production in 1999 was 130,000 tons. Bananas formed 2.4% of the exports in 1999 and Jamaica formed around 7.5% of the total production of banana in the Caribbean. Jamaica stopped exporting banana in 2008 after suffering from several years of hurricanes that devastated the plantations.
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The company was formed in 1899 from the merger of the Boston Fruit Company with Minor C. Keith's banana-trading enterprises. It flourished in the early and mid-20th century, and it came to control vast territories and transportation networks in Central America, the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and the West Indies.