Poison(ed) Bananas

BY TONY CRUZADA

AERIAL SPRAYING of hazardous chemicals over banana plantations in Davao continues despite scientific evidence of their harmful effect on human health and the environment.  The plantation owners are not to be bothered nor deterred.  Not by public clamor, nor by law (which they can, after all, buy).

What we see is the insensitivity and arrogance of capitalist corporations.  So they produce poisoned bananas, uncaring about consumers, workers and affected communities.  And under modern forms of enslavement with neo-colonial indifference and unmoderated greed.

Since protest, pleading and law dont work in this case, our best and only recourse will have to be: to produce and export clean and nutrilicious bananas ourselves.  There is clean technology for growing organic banana that is preferred by the Japanese market and presumably other green markets abroad.

The bananas are grown with conscious regards and compassion for workers who co-own the enterprise.  This is being done by Negros farmers under the guidance of the organization AlterTrade.

In the receiving countries to which the poisoned Davao bananas are exported, we should network with civil society organizations and consumer networks to mount an all-out campaign to shift to clean, organic bananas.  While here we should expand the organic banana production and be ready to fill the demand.

In expanding production of organic banana we shall be creating jobs and business for agrarian reform beneficiaries and landless rural workers.  The emphasis on clean and healthy production methods (chemical-free) will cause a recovery of the caring attitude for people that communities should nurture.

And because production will be through worker cooperation and the enterprise will be worker-owned, dignity of work will be restored, and labor amply rewarded.  Morever, the enterprise can be opened for investment by small entrepreneurs such as vegetable and fruit vendors so that a wider population can benefit from the enterprise and shore up their household economy.

In this manner, immediate neighborhoods in the plantation areas are connected to other communities in municipal and urban markets, propelling the banana export industry for the benefit of many.  And the beneficiary entrepreneurs can serve as change agents for more caring, self-sufficient communities.

As this pattern of production and fair trade is multiplied across many other products and localities, we shall have a nationwide rebuilding of the life chances of household and flourishing of local economies.

As to the arrogant aerial-spraying corporations, they will either go organic or close shop.  Let Philippine bananas be green-organic.  Let Filipino enterprise be compassionate.  Let our communities be richly productive through communal modes of production and the restoration and nurturer of the sense of community.

About the Author:  Tony Cruzada is a social researcher who currently writes for Kamayan para sa Kalikasan journal.  Catch him at Kamayan Edsa for an environmental forum that meets every 3rd Friday monthly, 10:30AM to 2:00PM.

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