Such a fun day! I’m sad our time is coming to an end, we only have 3 full days left! It definitely went by fast. Today we had the chance to visit a women owned banana plantation and Dole pineapple plantation. Both were very informative and super interactive which I loved and made the trip engaging and more entertaining. The banana planation was nice because we got to harvest them ourselves and cook them and then have them for lunch. We learned that during the pandemic, the banana plantation could not survive off of exporting just bananas so they decided to start exporting frozen products and also empanadas. They also began making banana flour which doesn’t have gluten. In between the months that coffee was being exported they needed to create a new crop to export during the other time. So the first export of bananas was to New Jersey. The relationship between coffee and bananas is that coffee started staking 6 months to export but after a railway was made it only took 6 weeks to export both goods. We learned that a marketing tactic was to put bananas on the back of cereal boxes like cornflakes. In regard to sustainability, they use other products to make natural fertilizer, since it is an organic plantation. The leaves hold water and contain latex on one side to protect from rain, even though they need a lot of water and humidity. When harvesting, they do not waste the trunk. Instead they use it as compost. A threat they face is when disease wipes out whole plantation or raccoons or moles eat the soil or roots. Since they steer away from chemicals they try and create traps. However, it is not always effective.

We then headed over to Dole pineapple tour. I was shocked to see how vast and large the plantation was. Also that only one pineapple can grow on a plant at a time and each is planted and harvested individually by hand. The farmers told us that even though they are organic they spray etholine which creates natural flowering so they do not grow uncontrollably. We also learned a good farmer plants 6,000 pineapples a day! Like the banana plantation, they are organic and don’t use pesticides. They control fungus and bacteria and insects with microorganisms. A fun fact is that pineapples are never fully ripe to pick. So the trick is to pick them when they are between green and yellow but not too much of the one color. Since it is an organic plantation, they reject about 30% of the pineapples due to insect damage and because it is such a natural process. On the flip side, a plantation that uses a lot of pesticides may only reject 5% because they are less likely to be negatively affected by insects but ultimately not as good and healthy. Another thing Dole does to promote sustainability is mixing garlic, onions, and pepper as a natural way to get rid of bugs. They are able to reuse the same pineapple plant even after one is picked, because they grow “baby shoots” which are basically just another one in its place.

If I were a plantation worker I would prefer to work on the banana plantation because it looked less overwhelming. The pineapple plantation was huge and covered a ton of acres. Driving a tractor through the field and climbing into the bushes to hand pick each one seems tiring. The banana plantation seemed easier because you just go up to the plant when its ready and chop it down and you’re done.

Tomorrow we have chocolate tasting! Stay tuned! 🍫