Bananas part 4

We finally got to go see a banana plantation! On Friday, after leaving La Selva, we headed to Chiquita. There we visited a Guayacán farm on which Chiquita grows its bananas. The plantation was a sort of experimental farm for Chiquita, trying out new methods to be more sustainable and better for the environment. The plantation is connected to a large forested area which is kind of a preserve. It was saved so that animals can travel through the corridor to a different national forest. Anyway, we learned that bananas are not native to Costa Rica which is the reason for all the chemicals that are used to help the bananas grow or pesticides to keep bugs from infesting them. These pesticides and chemicals are eventually drained into local rivers and things because of the elaborate system of aquaducts/ditches (i cant remember the word that is used for dispersing water on farms) goes between all the plants. The bananas have to have a specific amount of water, not too much or they will drown and not too little or the plants will die.
The way bananas grow is pretty interesting. First of all, bananas are not a tree. They are a plant, and the banana group begins as a flower. The flower takes 9 months to mature and turn into a bunch of bananas, and as they ripen, plastic bags are put over the bananas to protect them from bugs. Because this plantation is the main eco-friendly project for Chiquita, these bags are recycled and reused, but on most plantations this doesn´t happen and often times these bags are found in the ocean or other random places along the drainage ditches.

This plantation takes extra care to make sure their workers are safe. These methods include wearing a long sleeve shirt (oh yeah, im sure that does a lot) and a mask. Workers also get their blood tested every 3 months to make sure that they are doing okay, but all these methods dont really seem to be that effective. To me, it seems kind of fake. They do all these things to pretend that they care about their workers, but in actuality, these methods are just to look nice and don´t seem very effective. The health of the workers is still largely at risk, and the company looks the other way because they are doing a tiny bit to act like they care.

We got to see their packaging plant, and it seemed to be safe overall. The workers looked happy and had simple jobs like washing off the bananas, throwing out the ones that looked flawed so they could be used in baby food and other things, putting stickers on each banana by hand, or packing the bananas up in boxes to be shipped to America and Europe. We also witnessed the crazy Chiquita Banana Show, where local women try to become actresses and follow a cheesy script explaining how the bananas are grown and processed. It was one of the most bizarre experiences of my whole trip, along with the Cafe Britt show, and was hard to understand because it was all in Spanish. They had outrageous costumes and wore makeup to look like men. At one point the women grabbed some guys hands and made them dance in a circle. It was awkward to say the least, and one of the women had disturbingly sweaty hands. They took us out to the banana field for an extension of the bizarre show where they showed us the plants. Every banana plant is tied down to the ground with multiple ropes because the plants are too big to hold themselves up, which is one again an example of why bananas probably shouldnt be grown in Costa Rica. This will never change most likely. Overall, the plantation was very interesting and demonstrated some big problems that Chiquita has some not-so-effective solutions to try and fix.