Living in an era of biodiversity loss and mass migration from Central America, we need to ask ourselves: is the true cost of bananas reflected in their retail price? Big harvests of inexpensive bananas are enabled by technology, including plant breeding, fertilizers and pesticides, but also low-wage, often contracted labor in both fields and packing plants. Monocultures are a way to organize plants and people for profit, not for sustenance. The “cheapness” of bananas is directly linked to a system of production based on monocultures - dense plantings of a single crop.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |