Page 37 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 2: economic and policy analysis of the banana sector in ecuador and implications for social and environmental sustainability
Pest and disease control is an essential component in the management of banana production. Aerial, as well as terrestrial, applications are commonly used in Ecuador, with large variations in the types and rates of substances applied from plantation to plantation. Typically, the banana fruit itself is covered with plastic to protect the fruit from insects and from the application of insecticides.
Once the fruit is harvested, it is transported to the processing area, either manually or by way of an aerial cableway. Bananas are harvested year round on a weekly basis. The production process begins when a banana plant sprouts from the root, from where its parent plant was cut, and ends approximately one year later when its fruit is harvested and loaded onto a truck (Human Rights Watch, 2002). The main field and packing plant operations are summarized in Table 3.
Table 3 shows the critical importance of labour in the banana production. Even the smallest farm will hire permanent workers (Roquigny et al., 2008). According to a MAGAP estimate, the average national number of workers on a banana plantation is 1.1 person per ha for direct labour and 1.5 for direct and indirect
Table 3 Main banana field and packing plant operations
Field operations
Packaging plant operations
• Weeding •
• Applying weed and worm killer •
• Weaving long plastic covers around bananas • to prevent them from damaging each other
• Covering bananas with insecticide-treated • plastic bags
• Tying insecticide-treated plastic strips around • plant stalks
• Cutting yellow banana leaves •
• Tying plants to each other or propping them • up with wooden poles to ensure stability
• Tying coloured strips around plant stalks to • indicate growth phases and monitoring these phases
• Harvesting fruit-laden stalks and transporting • them to the packing plant*
• Cutting the remaining stems after harvesting •
Removing plastic from the harvested banana stalks
Picking flower remains off the fruit Cutting bananas from their stalks
Making banana clusters
Discarding bananas that do not meet company standards
Washing and weighing the fruit
Sticking company labels on each banana cluster
Applying post-harvest pesticides
Boxing the fruit
Loading the boxes onto a truck
• Discarding waste from the banana production process
Source: Human Rights Watch (2002)
* Two types of workers are required to harvest bananas: a cutter and a backer. The cutter cuts down the plant with
a machete, while the backer waits for the cut stem to settle on a thick cushion on his/her shoulder. The cutter then chops the stem to enable the daughter plant to take over as the main stalk. The backer carries the fruit and attaches it to a nearby overhead cableway where the stem is transported to the packing shed (Vanzetti et al., 2005)
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