There is a world of difference between the coffee bean business versus the banana and pineapple business. When it comes to banana and pineapples, you take the fruit directly from the farm to transporters to retailers. However, when you’re working with coffee beans, you have to take them through the roasting process which adds another whole market and step to the coffee industry. There are some similiarities between the harvests though including a strict quality control process that can sometimes eliminate up to 30% of the plants.

When looking at the enviromenral aspect of the plants, it seems that growing organic always brings some more challenges. In the case of the pineapples, since pesticiudes are not allowed it’s necessary to use a plastic covering over almost the entire plants location. That means 80 acres of pineapples may very well use up 80 acres of plastic covering, a hefty fee. In addition, to ensure pineapples are getting only the specific nutrient they are lacking, plantations take pineapple leaf samples to study what nutrients they are missing. They then make sure the farm is supplemented with only that nutrients to avoid waste or a need for chemicals. It seems that with banana growing in an organic way, the remains of the banana trees are used completely. The remains go towards recipes, shipped out for other products, or used in compost so theres no waste. Overall, it creates the highest quality product without using harmful products for humans and the Earth.

If I was a plantation worker I would most certainly prefer to be working with coffee rather than pineapples or bananas. The shade of the trees often found in coffee plantations, in addition to the higher elevation they are grown in, seems like it would be much better. From our short experiences today, it seemed like the banana and pineapple plantations required much more physical labor as well as higher temaptures. In specific, the pineapple plants also have the spiky crown on top that can be extremely painful when picking. Bananas may seem more conveinent however a group weighs so much it would be almost exhausting. Hands down I would rather be picking coffee beans over bananas and pineapples anyday.