Martin Henry
WE ARE going bananas! Last week was Banana Week with the European Union (EU) Banana Support Programme for Jamaica encouraging us to eat more bananas.
Hurricanes - and diseases - have been the major crises for the banana industry before the World Trade Organisation (WTO) disallowed preferential access to the European Union English market. We are to eat more bananas not only because they are good for us, but to help save the industry. So do your patriotic duty and eat bananas while reaping all the positive health benefits advertised by the programme last Thursday,
The Gleaner's Food and Lifestyle features day.
It is remarkable how the banana has sprouted in pieces of work I have been doing recently. The fruit has been a major part of Jamaican history, economy, and culture. Some work I am doing with a team on the history of the telegraph in Jamaica has led us back to Captain Lorenzo Baker and the start of the banana trade out of Port Antonio. In 1870 Baker sailed cargo into Port Antonio and spotting a brilliant business opportunity bought 160 bun-ches of bananas at a shilling a piece, or about US10 cents.
Bananas had been a staple in the diet of slaves and free peasants since its introduction here. The sailing ship captain raced his cargo to Jersey City in 11 days where he sold the bananas for US$2 per bunch - 20 times what he had bought them for!
Baker and others formed the Boston Fruit Company which morphed through several steps into the United Fruit Company (UFC). The UFC, in its heyday, was the world's largest transnational company. The giant company owned its own Great White Fleet, railways, plantations across Latin America and the Caribbean, and its own telegraph system. But the UFC also 'owned' and manipulated Latin American governments to the point of instigating coups to install accommodating regimes. That's how we got the term 'banana republic'.
PREFERENTIAL ACCESS
The United Fruit Company, which once marketed Jamaican bananas, morphed into Chiquita, the company leading the way in securing WTO rulings against the preferential access of ACP bananas into the EU market.
Working on the story of community development of Walkers-wood has brought me in touch with Sir John Pringle. Pringle left Scotland as a poor doctor on advice to seek his fortune in the colony and ended up as the largest landowner and banana producer in Jamaica. One of his properties was Bromley in Walkerswood, which later became a focal point for community development activities with his daughter Minnie. John Pringle married a Levy, they of Jamaica Broilers, etc.
HANDFUL OF PLANTERS
Pringle was one of a handful of planters who formed the Jamaica Banana Producers Association (JBPA) as a cooperative in 1927 as a direct challenge to the low-paying dominance of UFC and the British Elders and Fyffes. The JBPA is the parent of today's Jamaica Producers Group, with Charles Johnston, the grandson of one of the other founders, still serving the organisation.
Norman Manley, the legal adviser to the JBPA, in his autobiographical sketch, dramatically narrated how negotiations with UFC and its tough boss Samuel Zemurray surprisingly ended with an offer by UFC to give one cent per bunch of banana exported from Jamaica to form a fund "for the good and welfare of the people of Jamaica, with emphasis on the rural people."
So was Jamaica Welfare born from bananas. Jamaica Welfare, after a distinguished track record of community development, has morphed into the SDC under state control. The JW cooperative development officer, Thom Girvan, Norman Girvan's father, was very instrumental in Walkerswood community development which was used as a model pioneer community.
Following my Garvey interest, I discovered, in Garvey's own words, that the white, banana-wealthy John Pringle was a principal backer of the formation of the UNIA in Jamaica.
The banana has received quite a bit of research and development attention here, including the development of new cultivars by Ren Gonzales and others. Some communication work for the SRC has shown that the council has perfected the production of disease-free plantlets by tissue culture, supplying tens of thousands to the industry.
Banana boats brought the first tourists into Jamaica, launching the tourism industry in Portland. The banana and the tourist also famously met as part of Jamaica's cultural expression in Evan Jones' classic, 'The Song of the Banana Man', repeated by generations of school children.
Martin Henry is a communication specialist.
