Bananas part 3

Dangerous bananas? Yes, its true. Bananas can be extremely harmful to the health of the environment and plantation workers. This post will be about the problems that plantations and their overseeing corporations have when it comes to the general health of the world. There are problems with the rights of immigrants and human rights, violations of labor standards, pesticide runoff problems, and deforestation in order to expand plantations. There is a major project/ group in Costa Rica that has been formed to help change the environmental conditions of banana growth, and it is called the FORO EMAUS or Emaus Forum in English. They have problems fighting against powerful corporations unwilling to change, political parties, and mass media. Another problem is the consumer. Because people in America and Europe prefer bananas to not only taste good but look good too, extra pesticides and chemicals not necessary to the health and taste of the bananas are used. I feel that if people realized that bananas that look okay but not great taste the same and are better for the environment, there might be a market for that specific product. Bananas weren't originally meant to grow in Costa Rica. The plant is from Asia, and this is the underlying reason why so many harmful chemicals have to be used to assist in the growht of the plants. Some chemicals used in banana production have been so harmful to workers in the past that they became sterile and unable to have children. The problem with some corporations is the fact that they sometimes refuse to comply with Costa Rican laws and other international "requirements" in the banana agricultural sector. Spraying the pesticides by airplane and not by hand also expands the affected regions because the pesticides are airborn and can be blown around by the wind to where some workers may live. After many years of pesticides being used, the ground often becomes saturated and unable to grow anything becasue of the chemical content. A way that workers can protect themselves is by joining unions, so nearly 90% of all banana plantation workers are part of the union UTRAL and many file complaints about working conditions, which is why they have improved significantly in recent years.