Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Bananas

Summer seems to be over in the WC. The peaches are gone from the market and the mornings and evenings are turning cool. I actually didn't mind having a suit jacket on as we walked over to a meeting at the Ministry this morning.

Of course, cool weather means bananas, nobody's favorite fruit, but one of the few things that everyone in the family will eat. As I was finishing the second banana of the season this morning, I noticed that it was from Ecuador, harborer of Julian Assange. I didn't think that I had ever seen a banana (or possibly anything) from the mysterious country with the latitudinal name. When I tried to envision those blue Chiquita stickers in my mind, all I could see was "Costa Rica."

Turns out that Chiquita (a North Carolina company btw), does do a lot of growing and processing in Costa Rica, but, via the ever invaluable Wikipedia,  although India is the biggest producing state (30 million tonnes or 20% of world production), Ecuador is the biggest exporter, accounting for 30% of total exports, almost three times its nearest competitor.

 Turns out that over 40% of the country's bananas go to the EU, compared to only 20% in the U.S. I'll conduct a Facebook poll and see what everybody is eating.

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