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Production Overview

CHANGING CONSUMPTION AND TRADE

Some 80 per cent of bananas produced are consumed in their country of origin. This includes bananas produced as a staple food in a variety of subsistence production systems in Africa and Asia.

Being from tropical climates, bananas are available throughout the year and can be harvested green and still ripen satisfactorily. Industrialised countries of the Northern Hemisphere developed such a taste for imported bananas that they became the most valuable fresh fruit in world trade, a position they held from the late nineteenth century until the 1970s when citrus products moved ahead. The 20 per cent of production entering world trade passed 11 million tonnes in 1994.

The table below shows the main banana exporters dominated by Ecuador (33 per cent of the world total), Costa Rica (16 per cent), Colombia (13 per cent), the Philippines (13.7 per cent) and Guatemala (6.8 per cent).

The United States is the largest single market for bananas (one-third of world imports) followed by Germany (13 per cent) and Japan (10 per cent). The European Community imports about 40 per cent of traded bananas with about one-quarter coming from Africa and three-quarters from Central and South America.

Table: Gross banana exportsby the major exporters.

Source: data taken from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Major Development and Recent Trends-International Banana Marketing Structures, 2003, p62.)