Bananas, Are They the Quintessential Health Food? A Global/Local Perspective

Abstract

Banana cultivation serves to demonstrate that we as consumers must expand our conceptualization of healthy to include the production practices of growers and the political and economic milieu in which production and distribution are sustained, as well as their impact on human health and the physical environment. Political ecology is used to examine the agro-food sector to understand more clearly the relationship that food producers, local governments, transnational corporations, international policy-makers, regional and extra-regional markets have with each other vis-a-vis the linkages they maintain in the banana industry. This article examines banana production in the Caribbean and its connections with the European Union. Specific attention is given to Windward Island banana production, and especially to St. Vincent. This article illustrates that the increased acreage under banana cultivation and its associated loss of vegetative cover is creating a downward spiral of environmental degradation. Th...