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The local population in countries that export bananas typically eat different varieties grown primarily by small farmers. The ones for the Americans and the Europeans, Cavendish variety bananas, are grown in huge, monoculture plantations that are susceptible to disease. The banana industry consumes more agrichemicals than any other in the world, asides from cotton. Most plantations will spend more on pesticides than on wages. Pesticides are sprayed by plane, 85% of which does not land on the bananas and instead lands on the homes of workers in the surrounding area and seeps into the groundwater. The results are cancers, stillbirths, and dead rivers.

The supermarkets dominate the banana trade and force the price of bananas down. Plantations resolve this issue by intensifying and degrading working conditions. Banana workers will work for up to 14 hours a day in tropical heat, without overtime pay, for 6 days a week. Their wages will not cover their cost of housing, food, and education for their children. On most plantations independent trade unions are, of course, suppressed. Contracts are insecure, or workers are hired through intermediaries, and troublemakers are not invited back.

Who benefits most from this arrangement? The export value of bananas is worth $8bn - the retail value of these bananas is worth $25bn. Here’s a breakdown of who gets what from the sale of banana in the EU.

On average, the banana workers get between 5 and 9% of the total value, while the retailers capture between 36 to 43% of the value. So if you got a bunch of bananas at Tesco (the majority of UK bananas come from Costa Rica) for 95p, 6.65p would go to the banana workers, and 38p would go to Tesco.

Furthermore, when it comes to calculating a country’s GDP (the total sum of the value of economic activity going on in a country, which is used to measure how rich or poor a country is, how fast its economy is ‘growing’ and therefore how valuable their currency is on the world market, how valuable its government bonds, its claim on resources internationally…etc), the worker wages, production, export numbers count towards the country producing the banana, while retail, ripening, tariffs, and shipping & import will count towards the importing country. A country like Costa Rica will participate has to participate in this arrangement as it needs ‘hard’ (i.e. Western) currencies in order to import essential commodities on the world market.

So for the example above of a bunch of Costa Rican bananas sold in a UK supermarket, 20.7p will be added to Costa Rica’s GDP while 74.3p will be added to the UK’s GDP. Therefore, the consumption of a banana in the UK will add more to the UK’s wealth than growing it will to Costa Rica’s. The same holds for Bangladeshi t-shirts, iPhones assembled in China, chocolate made with cocoa from Ghana…it’s the heart of how the capitalism of the ‘developed’ economy functions. Never ending consumption to fuel the appearance of wealth, fuelled by the exploitation of both land and people in the global south.

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If i may ask, why has your kid had a lawyer since birth?

Honestly, because I had unprotected sex with one

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Tonight in ‘reddit headines that made me laugh’

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being an intersex person who isnt a waifish hairless elf devoid of any visible sex characteristics i honestly think if i was a fictional character id be denounced as a transphobic stereotype

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You thought this was a rabbit? They thought this was a rabbit. That's fucking funny bitch, this is fucking Winnie the fucking Pooh. Yeah. Yeah. Fuck 4th of July

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Free mass transit, paid family leave, childcare, and zero tuition or we disappear you into a foreign prison cell for a social media meme.

Your choice!

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>Be me

>Make bowl of panda express leftovers

>Chow down on 2/3rds of it before father calls you over to show you memes

>Leave bowl unattended

>Laugh about memes for a good ten minutes

>Return to room

>??Bat? In bowl? ?

>Don't have anything to grab bat with that are bite proof

>Offer bat the head of the Winston Churchill marble bust to climb onto

>Bat does so

>Slowly carry Churchill and the bat to the window

>Bat won't let go of Churchill

>Pry bat off of him with nearby plastic skeleton hand

>Bat sits on windowsill for a second before flying off into the night

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idk thinking about how sometimes you have to show up for people you aren't that close to, because sometimes you're just the person who's there. sometimes you invite a new friend to a party and end up having to sit with them through a panic attack. sometimes you run into an acquaintance on their worst day and they need to talk about what happened. sometimes someone is crying in a stairwell and you're the only one around to ask if they're okay. and none of this is "trauma dumping" or whatever the fuck it's just being there for people because you're the one in the room with them.

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how it feels to stop tossing and turning and get up to piss

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I fucking hate it here

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"we took porn off tumblr for more lucrative advertising" like this you mean

"post plus" pay me to have to look at these

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The Shadow Of Mount Rainier Causing A Gap In The Sunset.

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an absolute fuckton of people at pride rn

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