Just as a follow-up to rmplmnz's post, here is more food for thought:
Toward Freedom - Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?
Al Jazeera English - Americas - Banana grower's paramilitary links
This means that the American public was indirectly funding terrorist activities every time we bought a banana. True, we did not hold the gun, or swing the sledgehammers used to maul and bludgeon innocent people to death, yet we must ask ourselves some questions of conscience. Do we look the other way to keep banana prices lower, or do we make a stand?
It was reported that Chiquita sold Banadex (it's wholly-owned, most profitable Columbian banana subsidiary) to Banacol (Columbian owned) in 2004 for a pittance of between $45-52 million. (1.0-1.1% of sales) Ask yourself why? Chiquita's sales were about $4.7 billion. They were fined $25 million which is about 1/2 of 1% of sales. Black Sigatoka, race 4 fusarium wilt do not seem to me to be the driving force here. So once they "came clean" and sold the subsidiary to Banacol for pennies on the dollar, that was the end of it, right??? Welllll, not exactly:
Summary of CHIQUITA BRANDS INTERNATIONAL INC - Yahoo! Finance Let me see, so you can buy our entire Columbian subsidiary, but you have sell us essentially
all of your banana production for the next 8 years. And if you default, we get our subsidiary back. Sweet deal, eh? The 11 million boxes Chiquita is buying from Banacol amounts to 100% of their pre-sale production from Columbia. Oh, but after 4 years we will permit you to raise the price per box by $.25 if it is warranted in our opinion. (Duh!) Plus, you can't sell your bananas to anyone else for less than we pay, otherwise we get the lower price. We also have the right to buy any excess production at the same price. Where do i sign!!!? Draw your own conclusions.
The deeper one looks into this issue, the more you understand what is taken for granted in our lifestyles. This corporate behavior smacks of greed and corruption reminiscent of the pre-labor union industries in the USA, the auto workers, garment industry, oil, railroads, etc. It may be illegal here, but not in lesser developed and third world countries. Yes, I will still buy bananas until I can grow my own. But if there is something I can do about it, I will.
Featured Classified Listings
