Dole Food Company Sliding Into First

By Geoff Uttmark

Probably more than any other globally traded commodity, bananas are a staple in the diet of international metaphor, analogy, even morphology. On the latter point, the argument begins with European and North American debates about the merits of short curved Gros Michels vs. long, straight Cavendishes and ends with the fact that all banana plant species everywhere require about nine months to produce new bananas. More seriously, banana production, transportation and marketing tie together a host of important political, sociological, environmental and financial issues that remind us that developed and developing are merely fashionable words today to describe geographic neighborhoods on a globe we all share. In recent months, the EU / US banana trade dispute has again grabbed headlines, especially since Chiquita Brands has laid the blame for its possible bankruptcy squarely at the feet of the EU. Our weekly publication Freshly Minted placed Chiquita’s problems more in Cincinnati than in Brussels and more recently, the New York Times reported

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