VIDEO: Watch How Bananas Are Grown

This video shows how bananas are grown and processed.

There’s hands-on care and quality control at every step as bananas make their way from the farms into a store near you.

According to Wikipedia, banana plants may grow with varying degrees of success in diverse climatic conditions, but commercial banana plantations are primarily found in equatorial regions, in banana exporting countries. The four leading banana export countries worldwide are Ecuador, Costa Rica, Philippines, and Colombia.

Ecuador provides more than 33% of the global banana export. In 2004, banana producing countries totaled 130. Production, as well as exports and imports of bananas, are nonetheless concentrated in a few equatorial countries. 75% of total banana production in 2004 was generated in 10 counties.

India, Ecuador, Brazil and China produced half of total bananas. Latin American and Caribbean countries led banana production up to the 1980s, and Asian nations took the lead in banana production during the 1990s. African production levels have remained mostly unchanged.

Banana plantations, as well as growing the fruit, may also package, process, and ship their product directly from the plantation to worldwide markets. Depending on the scope of the operation, a plantation’s size may vary from a small family farm operation to a corporate facility encompassing large tracts of land, multiple physical plants, and many employees.

Production-related activities on a plantation may include cultivating and harvesting the fruit, transporting the picked bunches to a packing shed, hanging to ripen in large bunches, dividing large bunches into smaller market-friendly bunches, sorting, labeling, washing, drying, packing, boxing, storing, refrigeration, shipping, and marketing.

Depending on the scope of the operation, other activities may include drying, food preparation, tourism, and market research.

Banana plantations generally follow one of four major agricultural techniques: Intensive farming, sustainable farming, organic farming, and fair trade farming.

An intensive agricultural technique which requires clearing most if not all native vegetation from tracts of land, then densely planting and fertilizing the crop may produce the highest yield of fruit per acre, but it is viewed by environmental scientists as a technique which involves a history of high risk for damage to the local environment, and health risk to the agricultural workers.

As with broader sustainable agriculture, sustainable banana production aims to integrate three main goals: environmental stewardship, farm profitability, and prosperous farming communities. Producing goods without depleting an ecosystem’s natural resources is a key goal of sustainable banana farming.

The further goals of farm profitability and prosperous farming communities address free market viability issues which might threaten the viability of the business, rendering the ecological sustainability efforts moot.

Because of the lower per-acre crop yield and higher wage cost intrinsic to this type of farming, profitability is addressed by the introduction of a price premium charged for the product at market. Such premiums are readily paid by a segment of the consumer market which places a value on the benefits of sustainable farming.

According to the United Nations, “no information is available regarding how many hectares are currently under conversion or how many producers are planning to convert to organic production methods.” However major banana producers indicate they are responding to demands for organic bananas with new facilities tailored to that market.