BANANA CONSUMPTION IN THE SOUTH
GHANA

Kingsley Ofei-Nkansah, Ghana Agricultural Workers’ Union of T.U.C.

Thank you Mr. Chairman,

I’m afraid I am the last to come, and unfortunately I have no slides to show, partly because of my own technical incompetence.

I’ll tell you about the problems my country is going through; half of the towns have no access to electricity. I’ll try to make a presentation on the consumption patterns by weird stories with the hope that you won’t fall asleep.

On the 17th of February 1996 went to a village as a part of my normal job. Following our methodology, we deal with farmers who live hundreds miles away, we try to get them to tell all kind of stories and then we see the way we can proceed with them on the basis of those stories.

One of the interesting stories I heard has to do with when bananas or plantains were discovered. According to them, this man got lost in the forest, and he managed to survive; after one week they found him, and when they asked him about the secret of his survival he said: ”Look, I’ve discovered a new food stuff, I ate it all the time and I’ve survived”. So, he introduced it to them and he said it was plantain. But, according to someone else, the food stuff in this story was no plantain, it was banana.

Then, they asked me for my opinion, and I said: ”why do you imagine that I, who is coming from the capital, knows whether it was banana or plantain?”. Here the point I want to make has to do with the notion people has about their own item, the item they depend on for consumption, and how as a result of the kind of relationship we develop with people, they will look up to us for answers... that’s my first point.

In the same kind of work we went to a village and we decided to celebrate the anniversary of the discovery of bananas or plantains, I’m not sure which one it was. So as a trade union we decided to set up a planning committee, and you know sometimes we manage to go forwards a bit, specially when we are put under a lot of pressure, otherwise we talk a lot. Now, the question was: who shall we invite for the celebration? Someone said this was going to be difficult because we had to give due recognition to everyone working in the plantain sector. Then they informed me that there were about 260.000 people producing bananas. Then I asked, which one are we going to talk about, plantain or bananas? I proposed to talk about bananas, and they agreed because they thought it would make our Union stronger. Then, plantain wasn’t in the agenda yet, but if we had that stronger position, in the near future when plantain comes to the agenda, which is our agenda, the Union will be in a better position to defend our interest.

So, the next question was about the sitting arrangement for all this people and their families. So, we decided to sit about 700-800 people on the high table, but this farmers had about 10.000 indirect employees. And, what about the rest of the people producing any other kind of banana or plantain that could never meet the standards of the Codex Alimentarius Commission. We’ve got there a very small banana, but actually, many people prefer that. Finally we decided to give the first place to the 260.000 people who produce small bananas, they could sit on the high table. They shall be followed by the 700 people who are employed by Real to produce the ”Cavendish” variety for the European market, and they shall be followed by the managers of ”Real”.

At this point the question was: how many people is selling this produce? And now, I’ll tell a story once again.

In 1979, when I was in my last year of formal schooling I went to a very far away village. So we walked for miles and miles. We found a bunch of bananas and the guy who was showing me around, said: ”help yourself!”. So I took one or two, unsure of what the situation was. But I was very hungry and they looked very nice, yellow and smallish; when I tasted them they were very sweet and tasty bananas. Then, I asked my friend: ”what a hell is that? how can you ask me to take those bananas from someone else?”. And he said, don’t you worry, these bananas are for free. I said that bananas were for sale ... this was in 1979.

The reason for this was that it would take a lot of trouble for taking those bananas to the nearest village and finally sell them for peanuts: it would make no economic sense. But they found a lot of sense in putting those bananas at the cross-roads to ripen, so that anyone could find them and pick them. Because of this particular ripening they were so sweet and tasty and probably had a higher nutritional value than other types.

Now you may be wondering why am I telling you this story, so I’ll tell you another story to explain it:

Somewhere in the U.K., somewhere in the middle of Leicester, someone put a lot of backyard garden tomatoes and then he didn’t know what to do with them. So he put some in the street in the morning. At the end of the day nobody had picked any. So the next day he wrote down: ”1 pound for a penny”. Within 2 hours all the tomatoes were gone!

In the first case, given the economic situation there was perfect understanding, but in the second one, people could not understand how in 1979 someone could leave those tomatoes to be picked for free. No understanding, no trust. It doesn’t fit with the economic and market relations. Here again I’m making a point about the importance of the cultural environment. Economic considerations can mean different things to different consumers.

And now I come to the end of my story telling:

A variety called ”Cavendish” was introduced in Ghana and the members of our Union were very happy, because it meant more members for the GAWU of T.U.C., and therefore a bigger strength, which would allow us to see things that we usually do not see. So the banana comes into the market and we want to ensure the workers a fair deal. But the situation in Ghana is different from the one in Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala etc. We know that we have to fight constantly to defend our liberal regime.

Once we got the licence to negotiate with a certain company, the company was very friendly; so we negotiated our first agreement and soon we realised that this company was ready to agree to more concessions. And we were surprised, so we fairly labour this company. But the workers were not so happy. Why? Because, notwithstanding the fact that we as Union knew that the workers of Real were getting a much better deal than all the existing plantations, the workers were not felling happy because cost of living in Ghana is very high as compared to wages and salaries and I do not know about any employer who can fully satisfy the demands of any worker. Here always come our tensions and this is for the Union, as a social partner, to collaborate and co-operate with the employers to ensure that there is some stability to allow productivity to go on.

So finally fair trade bananas came onto the scene. But this was very difficult; first they had to introduce the ”Cavendish” variety on the local markets. As I said I don’t like that variety, there is nothing as sweet as the banana I ate by the cross-roads many years ago. So ”Cavendish” banana has no market in Europe and on the local markets people don’t like it. You must add to all this the fact that the new kind of banana is grown with fertilisers (not to mention agrochemical, pesticides, fungicides ...) and people, specially from the rural areas, if they have to choose, the will choose the locally grown variety, free from those chemical substances. So most of our people believe that it can be no good if it is produced artificially. This is the attitude.

Anyway they have to sell the produce. So women have to do the selling, and you know, women from Western Africa are very aggressive when they come to marketing and they are very effective; so they make the banana gain acceptability and the curious thing is that when these bananas gain acceptability in Europe, they gain acceptability in Ghana. There is an influence. I think that many of us develop a taste for it because of the good job done in the market, and when people learns that Real bananas contain 80% less agrochemicals than most conventional bananas, they get more acceptance. Last month, the women who had been doing this job for the last few years, were nearly kicked out by Real. This is a company that respects social justice and, to some extent, ecological criteria. And then they would rush to GAWU and say we were selling them making losses again and again, we did all the donkey job, we have invested in boxes that we stored the bananas in, so what the hell are these women up to. So I said, look, if you were selling to one big company for economic administrating management reasons, why don’t you strike a deal: the Union will guarantee for the women to form one association which is as good as one company, and then this is selling to thirty, forty women individually so that the executive will distribute, the Union will guide, train and advise for criteria about distribution and allocation at that level.

And then, on the 4th of February they finally agreed, after a lot of negotiations, they said: ”O.K., we will do this for six months, and then we will have to seat down again and talk”. That is a management ready to make concessions in the means of justice, while at the same time, keeping their economic considerations.

Well Chairman, I’ve talked a bit, and it seems to be that the final story is a story which shows how to resolve conflicts in favour of justice. I have no doubt that all the conflicts in the banana industry are a reflection of the many food questions or challenges of social justice that is confronting people in the South or in the North. And we do believe that as we try to narrow the gap between producers and consumers, as we try to bring all into one boat, we appreciate that we have a lot to share; we have different levels of societies. We have to see the best for a wide acquiescence of social justice and the best for mankind.

Thank you.