"If Chiquita come in, we are no way,
they will do us in . . . 
We don't know who to believe anymore,
and we don't know the future."

- Humbert Nicholson, small banana farmer in Grande Rivere, St. Lucia.

Island economies on the line. 

Chiquita SECRETS Revealed 

MIKE GALLAGHER & CAMERON McWHIRTER
Cincinnati Enquirer 3may1998

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Chiquita's efforts to end European trade protections for bananas grown in the Carribean could devastate a string of tiny island nations whose economies depend on small independent farmers who know nothing else.

"We afraid, but we are still planting bananas because that is all we know," said Nicholas Espirit, 42, who farms four acres in the north island village of Bells. "We scared about this Chiquita business. It's a pressure, man, it's a pressure."

Mr. Espirit worries about how to feed his five children if the banana business - the vast bulk of the region's exports - goes bust. That scenario could happen if Chiquita gets its way in a world trade dispute with the European Union (EU).

Currently, several developing nations - including the tiny Caribbean islands of Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent- receive preferences for their bananas because they were former colonies of Europe.

Since 1993, the European Union has imposed an elaborate importing system that granted preferences to former colonies that export bananas while limiting access to the European market for banana exporters with large operations in Central and South America. Chiquita, backed by the Clinton administration, wants to end those protections.

Both Chiquita and the Clinton administration, which has formally taken Chiquita's objections to the trade dispute panel of the World Trade Organization (WTO), have stated repeatedly that their argument is with the Europeans, not the Caribbean. But farmers on these islands are convinced that if Chiquita gains a larger share of the highly profitable European market, their tiny economies will be crushed.

Through its attorneys, Chiquita issued a statement that the banana regime set up by the European Union benefitted mainly "European banana distributors, rather than Caribbean or African nations."

Removing the European protections won't just hurt these small islands. It would have a severe impact on at least 10 independent nations and European territories, from the Caribbean to Africa, a combined population of almost 35 million.

The island nations of the Eastern Caribbean-Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent - would be among the hardest hit if the WTO's ruling stands and the system is dismantled.

"I'm not a very emotional man," Peter Carbon, Dominica's minister of agriculture and environment, told the Enquirer. "But if we lose bananas, there will be no country."

The islands provide only a small percentage of bananas to Europe's protected market - at most 3 percent annually. All the countries and territories that receive the protections account for only about 15 percent of all the bananas that go to Europe, according to the EU.

If Chiquita were to grab this market share, the European consumer probably would notice little change at the local grocery. But the business loss would have catastrophic implications for nations like Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent.

"The worst case scenario is you have increased poverty, increased hunger, educational opportunities for children declining," said Lawrence Grossman, an expert on the Eastern Caribbean banana industry and an associate professor at Virginia Tech. "What Chiquita will gain compared to what will be lost in the Caribbean, well, it truly creates a tragic situation."

Bananas

Bananas were introduced to the Eastern Caribbean by the British at the turn of the century. The crop did extremely well on the mountainous, humid islands. For the first time, farmers had a large export crop that would grow easily on the hillsides. Banana plants could not survive a hurricane, but they would grow back after only nine months or so. For small farmers, bananas have become a perfect crop because they can be farmed year-round.

Today, the government of Dominica estimates that at least 20,000 people out of a workforce of 35,000 depend on the banana, or "le fig" as it is known in the patois of that part of the world. The estimates on St. Lucia and St. Vincent are considered about as high.

While bananas help the region's economy, poverty still reigns. The per capita gross domestic product on Dominica is estimated at about $2,100, less than one-tenth the almost $25,000 per capita gross domestic product of the United States. Signs of poverty are visible everywhere on these islands, from the open sewers in the capital to the shack homes of villages.

However, internal Chiquita documents obtained by the Enquirer show that the company has made major political efforts in the islands since 1994. That year the company sent representatives to St. Lucia to make the offer of a joint venture with local growers. Under the deal, Chiquita would have become the exclusive European distributor of these islands' bananas.

Chiquita hired G. Philip Hughes, former ambassador to the islands under the Bush Administration, to meet with government and banana industry officials in the Eastern Caribbean, according to company records. His mission was to persuade them to create a joint venture with Chiquita and transfer the island's special banana export licenses to Chiquita. Those licenses allow growers to ship a certain number of bananas duty free to Europe.

Mr. Hughes said he was hired by Chiquita as a consultant for about nine months.

"I knew the leaders in the governments intimately and I knew the issues that they confronted economically," said Mr. Hughes, who currently is an executive for the Association for International Practical Training, based outside Washington D.C.

Chiquita had a lot to gain from the venture, as it listed in one of its executive summaries on the issue:

It would get the islands' European banana trade licenses, allowing Chiquita to send up to 2.5 million more tons of bananas to the lucrative European market.

It would save money in shipping and in sending bananas to southern Europe while shipping its Latin American bananas to the wealthier markets of Northern Europe.

In its documents sent to island officials, Chiquita stressed that it would provide the islands with technical support, offer slightly more for bananas and other benefits.

Mr. Hughes, the former ambassador, had "reconnaissance meetings" with government officials in the Eastern Caribbean as well as Washington and New York. But despite lobbying efforts by Mr. Hughes, officials on St. Lucia and other islands turned down Chiquita's offer.

"Chiquita was offering a terrific deal," Mr. Hughes said. "But they had one problem: the mind-set of the Caribbean leaders... The leaders really had a negative mind-set about Chiquita. They really considered it almost their enemy."

When the island governments rejected the offer, Chiquita's agents went to the growers' associations and in some cases to the farmers themselves. The banana growers associations refused the offers because they didn't trust Chiquita's intentions, according to Rupert Gajadhar, chairman of the St. Lucia Banana Growers Association.

Mr. Gajadhar said the offer from Chiquita agents was attractive to some farmers and caused a split in the farmers movement. Tensions between some farmers and the government led to violence, strikes and riots. In 1993, two farmers were shot and killed and another 25 were wounded when police opened fire on a roadblock set up by the Banana Salvation Committee, a grassroots group of banana farmers.

Mr. Gajadhar said he believed the salvation committee today is supported by Chiquita and that the group's leader, Patrick Joseph, meets regularly with Chiquita officials.

Mr. Joseph, a newly elected senator for the Labour Party, told the Enquirer that he has met many times with Chiquita, but denied the company was funding his operation.

"I always maintain that if Chiquita had given me money, and it means that it would help the cause that I am fighting, I would accept the money," he said. "But so far they haven't offered me money. Neither am I asking them for any."

Mr. Joseph said he and his supporters see the Caribbean banana industry as a lost cause. Chiquita will destroy West Indian banana production because it can grow bananas cheaper in Central America. He said the government should focus its energies on helping banana farmers find some other work.

"We do live in a capitalist society, and in capitalism the strong eat up the weak. Basically, that's what it is about," he said.

Mr. Hughes said the company was simply trying to obtain island licenses so it could sell more bananas under the banana protection scheme created by the European Union.

But many banana farm leaders on St. Lucia see Chiquita as a sinister force out to crush West Indian banana growers for the sake of profit. Elias John, president of the St. Lucian National Farmers' Association, said farmers initially thought the Chiquita agents simply wanted to buy their bananas. But then farmers began to believe Chiquita wanted to get control of the islands' banana import licenses to Europe.

"When we begin to get the truth, things were coming out about the amount that they used for the American (presidential) campaign and all that. We lost our faith and began to realize they were just after us to destroy us," he said.

Gripping a rusty cutlass while propping himself next to a banana plant, farmer Humbert Nicholson surveyed his 15-acre hillside farm in Grande Rivere, St. Lucia.

"If Chiquita come in, we are no way," said the 53-year-old farmer. "They will do us in."

Standing in worn rubber boots caked with mud, wearing grimy pants and a shirt so old the armpits have worn out, Mr. Nicholson is a typical Eastern Caribbean banana farmer - hard working and poor.

"We don't know who to believe anymore," Mr. Nicholson said. "And we don't know the future."

Decision could devastate islands

If the Caribbean banana industry collapses, the problem also could hit the United States in a powerful way: a dramatic increase in illegal drugs coming through the region.

"At the end of the day, when you have destroyed the economies of the islands and other countries, what is the fallback position? Crime, drugs, mass migration, insecurity of property," said Grayson Stedman, 56, the owner of a Dominican banana plantation and former chief financial officer of a local banana farmers' cooperative.

This view isn't just being espoused by citizens of the Caribbean. In 1996, U.S. Gen. John Sheehan, commander of the U.S. Atlantic Command responsible for drug interdiction efforts in the Caribbean, told a Washington, D.C. policy forum that the Caribbean banana industry must be maintained for U.S. interests.

"If you start deteriorating the economic infrastructure in the region, it is going to become my problem," he told the group.

The Caribbean islands are strategically located along key drug-shipment points from Colombia. Drug Enforcement Agency officials report that Colombia supplies most of the cocaine and much of the marijuana for the U.S. illegal drug market. Desperate farmers with empty fields and hungry children could make eager recruits for the drug cartels, officials say.

Caribbean Islands worry about enonomic future, farms

The economies of the Windward Islands in the Eastern Caribbean have been dependent on bananas for much of this century. If European Union banana protections opposed by Chiquita are overturned, the islands expect their already weak economies to collapse. Below are two islands that will be hit the hardest.

Dominica
Population: 83,000
Size: 290 square miles
Top crops: bananas, citrus, mangoes
A former British colony, Dominica has been independent since 1978.

St. Lucia
Population: 159,639
Size: 238 square miles
Top crops: bananas, coconuts, cocoa
A former british colony, St. Lucia has been independent since 1979

Economies threatened

Other countries and territories that would be impacted if their preferential access to the European Union was overturned include:

Jamaica (Caribbean)
population: 2.6 million
crops: sugar, coffee, bananas

Ivory Coast (West Africa)
population: 15 million
crops: coffee, rubber, bananas

Cameroon (West Africa)
population: 14.7 million
crops: cocoa, coffee, cotton, bananas

St. Vincent and the Grenadines (Caribbean)
population: 120,000
crops: bananas, coconuts

Martinique (Caribbean)
population: 403,000
crops: bananas

Guadeloupe (Caribbean)
population: 412,000
crops: bananas, sugar

Canary Islands (Atlantic)
population: 1.6 million
crops: bananas

(Copyright 1998)

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