Organic Bananas

in #life7 years ago

I remember once when I was working for Dole, we had a visit from a guy from Costa Rica who was working with organic banana farms the company has. It surprised me to learn that organic bananas can only be grown in semi desert climates which are found in a small part of Colombia and Ecuador and to a larger extent in Peru, at least these are the places where Dole is present.

Now we had an organic farm in Honduras, in what is called the Valle Arriba in the Aguan valley, this is a very arid zone, mostly cattle ranches which rely on the Aguan River for their water, precipitation in this zone is very low, the climate is incredibly hot during the day and very sharp drops in the very early hours, sometimes going as low as 10 degrees Centigrade. But still this place is too humid for organic bananas. Here is a photo of the part of Honduras I am talking about you can see that water isn't so abundant here.


SOURCE

I always wondered why organic bananas need this type of climate and the answer is easy. Bananas do need a lot of water, but the abundanace of water also make it likely that a sickness called Sigatoka will appear, and to prevent this from happening plantations have to be constantly sprayed with pesticides.

Organic bananas cannot be even near these pesticides as that would just destroy their organic label, they would be normal chemically treated bananas. So to have a banana farm you do have to have water for irrigation but not much rainwater, so a river nearby is the solution. I really thought this part of the Aguan Valley filled all these requisites, but no, it apparently has to much rainfall. So the organic farm was shut down. This is the reason they have hardly any organic bananas in Costa Rica also, too wet.

But in northern Peru and southern Ecuador they have a zone that is as close to a desert as you can be without actually being a desert, this also happens in Colombia, where there also some very arid zones.

Sort:  

WARNING! The comment below by @muksalpasee leads to a known phishing site that could steal your account.
Do not open links from users you do not trust. Do not provide your private keys to any third party websites.

Uncommon !!!
woaaww!!!
like the post ...
@upvoted

thanks for the info!

cool Bannanas!

I might try this in Australia!

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by gduran from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.

WARNING - The message you received from @muksalpasee is a CONFIRMED SCAM!
DO NOT FOLLOW any instruction and DO NOT CLICK on any link in the comment!
For more information, read this post: https://steemit.com/steemit/@arcange/phishing-site-reported-autosteemer-dot-com