Riding along the carreteras in Costa Rica gives the impression that this country has a thriving economy. Its tourism industry is well organized, has no shortage of nature activities to offer, and even when the weather isn’t the sunniest, there are still many of us eager to take on the class 3 and 4 rapids of the Rio Pacuare (a journey I highly recommend!)
Tourism aside, one ubiquitous feature on the Costa Rican highways is all of the containers. It seems that every time I look up, a container truck is rolling past me. Hamburg Sud, Maersk, tex, Genstar, Crowley, Triton, Florens, and so on and so forth. According to my driver, highway 32 takes us directly to Puerto Limon, one of the main ports on the Carribbean Sea side of the country.
Across the landscape I have seen coffee, sugar cane, rice, pineapples, and of course, bananas (pronounced “bananos” in Costa Rica), growing. Del Monte trucks are abundant on the roads too, and I had the pleasure of visiting one of its banana plantations and witnessing the harvest and processing of bananas for export. While labor intensive, it was otherwise a relatively simple operation.
The first thing to notice was that all of the banana trees had large blue bags on them. Turns out these bags cover the bananas to protect them from birds. While the birds do not eat the fruit, should they land on them, the skin would be compromised due to their claws. Pests were not an issue as they sprayed the plantation with pesticides (and coincidentally, even the airplane that did the spraying was also yellow!).
The processing itself entailed a worker cutting the entire branch of bananas off of the tree which was then placed on a hook on a portable cable. When enough had been hung on the cable, a man would wrap a harness around his waist and then walk briskly towards the processing center along a designated path, with the bananas whizzing along behind him.
Upon arrival, the banana branches were lined up until they got to another man who quickly cut off bunches of hard green bananas with a giant machete, and placed them on a turn belt. The bananas then went into a water bin where they were rinsed and sorted through by women. After traveling through this water system, a man then retrieved the bananas and placed them onto a drying belt, where they were ultimately packaged by women.
Bananas that are “blemish-free” make the cut to be exported. Those not quite so cosmetically perfect get sent to a secondary plant for processing into products such as baby food (at least this is what my guide told me).
Hearing this got me thinking about how we (as a population) in America prefer to have in-store products look as if they have been airbrushed, that is, unless it is picture perfect and dirt free, we question its quality, seemingly forgetting that food is grown in soil (and therefore, in contact with dirt).
I remember my days in Malta where the produce truck would pass through the neighborhood for a couple of hours, a few days a week, and I had to go and track it down if I wanted to eat. There were plenty of wonderful fruits and vegetables that I consumed that did not look “perfect” and which required me to wash the dirt off of them.
I recognize there are legitimate reasons for the United States importing “bird claw-free” bananas, but it begs the question - Why is it that we are so easily swayed in our opinion based on appearances?
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