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Production Overview

BANANAS AND THE BIOPHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT

Bananas require well-drained soils, a minimum of 1200 mm of rainfall annually and a mean temperature of around 26 degrees Celsius to flourish. They can bear lower temperatures and irrigation can be used to substitute for some rainfall. They grow from underground rhizomes and development from sucker to fruit harvest may take between 9 months and one year depending on climate. Because they thrive in warm, moist environments bananas are subject to attack from funguses, viruses, moulds and nematodes. These problems are increased in systems of monoculture where local ecosystems are turned over to a single crop, for example in banana plantations. Heavy applications of chemicals are applied, therefore, to growing plants and fruit bunches.

The diagram below illustrates the agro-ecosystem of a typical banana plantation. Heavy doses of fertiliser are used to replace nutrients taken from tropical soils by the plants, especially the more disease-resistant bananas introduced by the TNCs in Central America, and to maintain production at commercial levels. Two significant waste disposal problems are:

• stems of the banana plants whose decomposition after harvesting the fruit can deplete oxygen levels in waterways
• plastic bags used in large numbers to shield banana bunches from insects and spraying of the plants while fruit is developing to harvest stage.

The greatest environmental hazard remains the massive applications of fungicides and pesticides to control disease. Pesticides used are quite toxic to humans and wash into surface-water systems. By the mid-1990s, banana-exporting countries are now far more concerned about these environmental problems than in the past, partly because of fears about the long-term ecological sustainability of current methods of banana-growing, and also because of impacts on plantation workers exposed of exposure to large amounts of hazardous chemicals.