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Food Production at a Local Scale

Banana Production in the Philippines

HISTORY OF LAND OCCUPANCY, LOCATION FACTORS AND LINKS WITH OTHER FIRMS

History

Three centuries ago, this land belonged to groups of shifting cultivators who were gradually driven further inland after the conquest of the Philippine islands by the Spanish at the end of the sixteenth century.

In the nineteenth century, fertile lands near Davao Gulf were taken over by migrants from other parts of the Philippines for farming but the earliest new settlers often sold their land to wealthy people from Davao City or Manila. These absentee landlords farmed the land indirectly through managers or tenants and such land was used to establish  Lapanday.

The TNCs were most interested in Southeastern Mindanao because of the availability of flat land with alluvial soils in an area free of tropical cyclones which often cause havoc in other parts of the country. Good shipping connections were available around Davao Gulf.

Lapanday's major supply links were with Del Monte, a typical situation in agribusiness. It needed suppliers of fertiliser and chemicals, plastic bags, cartons, twine to tie up the heavy fruit, plus transport inside and outside the plantation. Agribusiness firms draw considerable profit from supplying these to farmers. In the case of   Lapanday, the owning families also had major investments in other banana plantations, banks, a brewery, cement and fertiliser factories, a shipping company, real estate, coconut plantations, coconut oil factories and prawn farms. Hence, growers like   Lapanday were really Filipino agribusiness firms using links with the banana transnationals to gain access to technology and markets.