When I worked at Walmart, bananas were the number one selling item at $.68/pound. Then, for a week, someone set the price to $.68/banana. So a whole bunch went from like a dollar and some change to like $7 on average. Instantly killed the sales until they went back to per pound. When I was asked to change the price sign, I asked if it was a mistake and they told me no.
Fun fact: At least here in Germany, supermarkets almost lose money on bananas. They can't raise the prices because the price of bananas is so ingrained into people's minds that an increase would implicitly signal "expensive store" even if all the other prices stayed the same.
Unless, of course, you're a member of the banana Republic that produced the banana. Then $2 is the largest fortune you've ever seen and your hands get chopped off if you get caught eating a banana when you were supposed to be picking it for the sheltered, ignorant shit head that wrote this tweet.
Right. It's like idiots in the thread are reading it backwards or something. The fact that a banana can be purchased anywhere in the world for an excessively low price, any time of year, shows the level of subjugation used to farm the bananas and harvest them in the first place is the benefit. Labor intensive sensitive crop grown in south and Central America by workers compensated very little for their work, and then treated far less than equitably in most other ways, (banana wars). The point of the tweet is that fucking everything the dumbass eating the banana has ever touched is more than likely proof that imperialism has benefitted him.
The United Fruit Company has been defunct for almost a century by now.
I still recommend buying fair trade Bananas if you can afford it, but eating a banana helps poor people in third world countries more than eating an apple, which doesn't send a single cent to the third world.
And second, why does the OP consider eating bananas exploiting banana farmers, but eating apples is not exploiting apple farmers??
Edit: thanks for the downvotes you dumb fascists.
I actually grew up in a banana producing country. All the leftists shitting on our produce are enemies of the people. People in poor third world countries desperately need money and selling their produce is how they earn money.
Yes, buy fair trade, that actually gives a better price to those farmers. But even without fair trade, buying tropical products helps tropical farmers.
Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.
Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.
This is true, but at the end of the day, that's where those people get the money they need to survive. Refusing to buy a banana isn't going to magic them up another industry.
That's really short sighted and screws over people.
With any product, the vast majority of money goes to rich capitalists.
But for a banana farmer, all their money comes from selling bananas. Sure, short term they could switch to manioc or rice or tobacco or some other tropical produce, but if no one buys those products, they have no income.
Longer term, they try to give their kids education so that the next generation will not be banana farmers, but that's only possible if they have enough money to send kids to school.
Buying fair trade Bananas is the best thing we can do to help them, aside from charity. Buying normal bananas is the second best thing that can be done.
Buying from shitty companies that exploit a country won't help people on that country.
Those companies do not inject money on the cities they enter. They bribe politicians for advantages, destroy the natural resources, and go as close to slave work as they can while paying no taxes.
"I don't see how I benefit from imperialism" typed the misguided asshole trying to make people feel guilty into his phone ironically powered by a lithium battery that was mined via slave labor provided by (drumroll) imperialism.