From breakfast foods to ice cream sundaes, bananas are in high demand around the world. Before this golden fruit ends up in your local supermarket, it travels through an international system of “free” trade. Eighty percent of the world banana trade is in the hands of 5 companies: Dole Food Company, Chiquita Brands International, Fresh Del Monte, Noboa and Fyffes. Since Central America is considered a valued hotspot for cheap labor and lax environmental laws, many companies control plantations in this region and compete with each other for profit. In fact, high demand by supermarkets and retailers have forced companies like Chiquita to seek cheaper sources of supply, creating competition between Latin American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia and Ecuador to offer lower prices.

In all agribusiness, weeding and cleaning tend to be the most tedious, least “skilled,” seasonal/part-time jobs and thus the most quintessential “women’s” jobs in agriculture. On plantations in Chinandega, Nicaragua, nearly all female workers are employed part-time in the packing sheds because they are seen as ideally suited for this type of work.

A woman’s sorting work entails carefully removing the bunches from the thick stems, evaluating the fruit by quality and length, rejecting damaged fruit, washing the fruit in chemical baths, weighing and attaching Chiquita stickers. This type of work is physically exhausting; sorting workers stand on shed floors for 12-14 hour shifts in poorly ventilated warehouses. Their hands are immersed in water-filled sorting bins, their clothes are soggy and cold. Working long hours in these conditions has exposed women to harmful pesticides, skin allergies, fungi infections, mycosis on nails and hands, cancer, muscle cramping and psychological effects such as isolation. The typical daily wage for a female banana packer in Nicaragua is US $1.20 – 1.50.

In the 1970s, the pesticide DBCP, or dibromochloropropane (banned by the U.S.) was used on Nicaragua's banana plantations by Chiquita and other corporations. The agrochemical causes irreversible health effects including sterility, testicular cancer, kidney failure, diminishing eyesight, bladder, liver, lung and thyroid damage, anaemia, and recurrent asthma. Today the pesticide remains in the environment and is transferred to humans through drinking water from rivers and wells.

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