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First ‘ECO-OK’
bananas
Environmental groups have awarded two small but progressive banana growers in Costa Rica and Hawaii the first ‘ECO-OK’ certifications for using environmentally friendly farming methods, which they say constitutes an important milestone in an international effort to improve banana growing conditions throughout the industry. At this stage, the ECO-OK Code allows the use of pesticides, but encourages a general reduction in use and elimination of the more hazardous pesticides.
The Rainforest Alliance in the US and Fundacion Ambio in Costa Rica have negotiated with fruit growers a Code of Environmental Standards for banana production. “The creation of this code was momentous because it showed that agribusiness and environmentalists can sit down at the bargaining table and agree on ways to significantly reduce the environmental impacts of a multinational industry” says Daniel Katz of the Rainforest Alliance.
Platanera Rio Sixola S.A. of Talamanca, Costa Rica, selling to Germany, and Kea’au Plantation on the Big Island of Hawaii, selling locally, are the first plantations to win the ECO-OK label. These standards require a catalogue of changes. There are guidelines for maintaining worker health and safety, handling and reducing waste, protecting the watershed and forest and using and storing agrochemicals. Clearing virgin rainforest for new plantations is prohibited and rivers must be protected with buffer strips of vegetation. Also required under the standards are ‘biological corridors’ green strips that link patches of rainforest for the benefit of wildlife. Producers must also properly dispose of all solid and organic waste, reduce waste and recycle when appropriate.
Some of the Environmental Protection Guidelines, which include provisions for pesticides, require industry to:
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offer a permanent training programme for workers informing them of the proper use and application of agrochemicals;
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define and mark limits for the application of agrochemicals that take into account sources of water, living quarters, packing zones and schools;
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not apply agrochemicals less than 100 metres from springs of water;
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monitor the quality of reservoirs that provide water for human and animal consumption, with an analysis a minimum of once every four months;
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provide medical control for those workers who constantly work with agrochemicals;
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provide agrochemical storage facilities that comply with the ordinances of the Ministry of Health (of Costa Rica where the code was originally drawn up);
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not utilise agrochemicals which have been prohibited by the US and/or the European Community;
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use treatment systems for liquid waste produced by packing installations, agrochemical storage facilities and workers’ showers;
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encourage aerial fumigation companies to provide waste treatment systems on their landing fields (it is hoped that the gradual restriction of aerial spraying can be incorporated in the future);
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incorporate environmental investigation into the research departments of companies in such areas as: substitutions of agrochemicals; reduction in the use of agrochemicals; impacts on wildlife;
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comply with established legislation.
The Rainforest Alliance says the whole package of standards is tough and few plantations will be able to pass without modifying their growing methods. In order to qualify, a grower must allow a team of technicians to inspect the plantation and approval, which must be renewed annually, is subject to the scrutiny of an independent board of reviewers.
The banana industry is dominated by the big multinationals. Between them, Chiquita, Del Monte and Dole control 70% of the world market. However, at least one of the big companies is expected to bring some of its plantations into the ECO-OK scheme by the end of 1993, according to Lenin Corrales, Director of the Rainforest Alliance’s Banana Project. Only then will ECO-OK bananas be widely available in the US and European markets.
A worry for environmentalists is the failure to incorporate a ban on aerial
spraying, with all its potential spray drift problems. The Rainforest Alliance
and Fundacion Ambio are sensitive to this, and hope actively to encourage
research that will negate the need for aerial spraying. However, the measures
are going to cost industry money and environmentalists are keen to bring
industry on board in the first instance, with the hope of tightening the Code in
future. This would include a prohibition on aerial spraying. (DB)