In terms of supply chain of coffee and bananas, they each have similarities and differences. Coffee beans are sourced by purchasing seeds and planting them to create coffee plants. Bananas are all clones of each other in order to create similar looking fruits to be sold. Both coffee and banana plantations have to plan a similar amount. Locations of fields, timing of planting and harvesting are very important to both chains. With design, more effort must be put into coffee rather than bananas. Packing is an important part of bananas. The packaging must be cost effective and have proper filtration all while being appealing to the customer. With bananas, customers buy them without packaging so designing isn’t that important. In terms of making a product, both are equally as demanding. Both banana and coffee plants must be frequently tended to and require a lot of hands-on labor. Coffee plantations usually require more effort in extracting the coffee bean since each plant must be picked, the cherry must be quality checked and peeled then dried, and then either shipped or roasted while bananas are checked on but each plant is only picked once and then the fruit is washed and shipped. With delivering, banana plantations must pick the bananas before they are ripe and then must wash and package them. With coffee beans, if they aren’t roasted, they can be placed into bags and shipped. If they are roasted, there are a few extra steps to roast them, package the, and ship them in their packaging.

As a plantation, Dole does a few things to protect the environment and its workers in terms of sustainability. To protect the bananas from insects and the weather, plastic bags have to be placed over the bunches. In order to minimize the impact of the environment, Dole recycles all their plastic bags along with other plantations in the area. At first, they thought about reusing the plastic bags. In order to reuse them, the bags must be collected, washed, dried, and then redistributed and ended up being much more costly than simply recycling the bags. Additionally, instead of using pesticides, they do something similar to what Life Monteverde does. Dole uses pheromones to attract female bugs to trap and kill them. To protect their workers, Dole provides payment and housing to them. Additionally, the government assists in protecting them by contributing to social security. For every dollar Dole pays a worker, they have to pay 50 cents to the government for aid.

The main threat banana plantations around the world face is TR4, a deadly banana disease that is spreading uncontrollably worldwide. Luckily for Costa Rica and Latin America, TR4 has only been seen in Africa and Asia so far. In order to mitigate the impacts of the disease, Dole asks before we enter the plantation whether we have traveled to any of the infected countries and whether we were wearing the clothes that could have been infected. Additionally, regardless whether we have knowingly interacted with TR4, we have to rise off our shoes and step in an iodine solution just to enter the plantation. If we want to enter the packaging center, we have to repeat that same process in addition to washing our hands and taking off any jewelry that might fall or come into contact with the bananas.

If I were a plantation worker, I would prefer to work on a banana plantation. Although both are tedious, I feel like it would be more fun to use machetes to cut down the bananas rather than hand picking coffee cherries from dawn until dusk. Additionally, while coffee plantation workers work from sunrise to sunset, banana plantation workers have two types of hours. The workers who come in to cut the bananas down normally come to work around 4 or 5 AM and then can get home for the day around 11 AM to noon. The worker in the packaging plant come in anywhere from 6 or 7 AM and then are able to leave by 4 or 5 PM.  Packaging workers are not able to work past daylight because if they were to add large amounts of light at night, it would attract insects that the bananas must be protected from.