Banana Production in Honduras - History

History

Honduras began exporting bananas in the late nineteenth century, and the trade grew rapidly. Initially, in the 1870s most banana production was confined to the Bay Islands, the mainland did not begin serious production until about 1880. The U. S. Consul reported that in 1894 goods worth almost $350,000 were exported to the United States, through Puerto Cortés, the region's main port, and by 1903 it had almost tripled to over $900,000. Much of this export was in the form of the growing banana trade, between 1894 and 1903 the trade had grown almost four-fold from somewhat over 600,000 stems to over 2 million. Shipping had increased as well, from 4 steamers a month bound for the United States to 18, and the destination ports expanded from only New Orleans to include Mobile, Philadelphia and Boston.

The initial growth of the trade was from local banana growers. A census of 1899 revealed that northern Honduras had over 1,000 people in the region between Puerto Cortés and La Ceiba (and inland as far as San Pedro Sula) tending bananas, most of them small holders. This numerous class was able to expand production, take over communal lands and win the political struggle with cattle ranchers over land control in the early decades of the twentieth century.

In the early years of the industry, banana growers delivered their fruit to the coast where steamers from a variety of U. S. based shippers purchased them. However, the steamship companies were gradually merged until only a handful remained, and these were soon to be dominated by the Vaccaro brothers of New Orleans, who founded the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company (eventually to become Dole) in 1899. Because northern Honduras had a poorly developed transportation network, only farms located along major streams, the few existing railroads on in the immediate vicinity of the coast were viable to participate in the export trade. Thus, the steamship companies needed to invest in constructing a local infrastructure of railroads that would expand the area available for cultivation. By 1902 local railroad lines were being constructed on the Caribbean coast to accommodate the expanding banana production.

The Honduran government, operating on Liberal economic policies that had been in place since 1876, made significant concessions of land and tax exemption to anyone who would open up agricultural land. While some Honduran producers were able to take advantage of these opportunities, the most significant concessions went to U. S. based companies that had the capital to purchase and develop land quickly. Companies like the Tela Railroad Company were granted land concessions in exchange for building railroad. In its 1912 concession, the Tela Railroad Company received 6,000 hectares of national land (that is land that was deemed vacant) for every 12 kilometers of track they laid, on the route from Tela to El Progresso, laid out in alternate blocks on both sides of the rail lines.

Following their first concessions in 1912, U. S. based concerns would achieve more or less complete control of the productive alluvial plains of Honduras' Atlantic coast. The area around Puerto Cortés was dominated by the Cuyamel Fruit Company, the La Ceiba region by Standard Fruit, and Tela and Trujillo were controlled by United Fruit's subsidiaries, the Tela Railroad Company and the Trujillo Railroad Company. By 1929, the United Fruit Company operated in over 650,000 acres (2,600 km2) of the country as well as controlling the major ports.

Initially, Honduran producers focused on growing the Gros Michel type of bananas, which had important characteristics that made them easy to store and ship and appealed to consumers in North American markets. However, in the early 1920s, banana producing areas began suffering from a blight known as the "Panama Disease" which, combined with soil exhaustion occasioned by monocrop agriculture led to a decline in many parts of northern Honduras. The companies sought to restore production by rerouting railroads and renegotiating concessions so as to bring more virgin land into cultivation. In addition they began to replace the Gros Michel with the Cavendish variety of banana which had some resistance to the disease.