Today was honestly one of the best days ever specifically because we had both a banana and pineapple tour. We started out at the banana plantation where we learned about how banana plants need lots of water and humidity. Due to the banana plant being about 80% water, they need a large amount of water in order to be produced. Now, humans create labs and change the genetic information of the plan which creates the cavendish banana causing it to be big, thicker, and sweeter. Bananas take a shorter time to be harvested rather than coffee taking 3 years. One side of the leaf that grows from the banana plant has latex which protects the plant from sun and rain. When the bananas are ready for harvest, they cut off right by the bunch of them. To contribute to sustainability, after chopping and picking the bananas, the peels are used for fertilizer. The problem with mono plants is that since they are all the same, 1 disease can kill the whole plantation and take nutrients from the soil. We got to enjoy a delicious lunch and everyone contributed to making the fried plantains.

Right after we made out way to the pineapple plantation where we went on basically a hay ride that had a tractor pull us through two of the plantations there. They spray artificial ethylene gas in liquid form so then a month later it will be ready for harvest. The process of natural flowering is when pineapple grows by itself which is the biggest problem because then the workers are not in control of the pineapple growing. The trick to grow commercially is to produce pineapple when the farmer wants it rather than natural flowering because then the pineapple will stop growing. With the natural flowering forcing the farmers to not be able to export them, the workers will either eat them in the fields or take it home to their families. In addition, they can’t use insecticides/pesticides, rather, they use micro organisms to keep them growing. The top of the pineapple is a shoot that you can plant on your own; if you use any of the shoots coming out from the pineapple then you can produce it in 1 year which is much less time than it takes for coffee to be produced.

We ate these pineapple fresh and it was the best pineapple I’ve ever had!!

If I was a plantation worker I would want to work on a pineapple plantation because I love pineapple and I feel like it would be the best experience out of the 3 to work on. Although you have to handpick each one, every other plantation has you either picking tons of coffee beans or chopping down bananas. If those pineapples go through natural flowering then it is left to the workers to take which is a score because I would eat so many of them!!