Hello again! We're back in New York, after two more trips: a return to Ecuador to follow up with two of our film subjects, and a quick trip to Europe. In Antwerp, we saw the Chiquita Deutschland arrive at port at talked with company executives about the importance of the European market.
I also thought about Marisol and Soraya while reading Dan Koeppel's new book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruist that Changed the World which suggests that Panama disease may return to Latin America. Many decades ago, the disease killed thousands and thousands of acres of the first fragile banana monocultures before growers switched to today's Cavendish. This variety was chosen for its strength, but may yet succumb to the inherent the weaknesses of monoculture. Koeppel documents the recurrence of the disease in Asia. Researchers are racing to find a second resistant variety, one that also tastes good, grows heartily, and is strong enough to export. In the meantime, the Cavendish feeds and employs millions. Marisol and Soraya put a face on the complex consequences of decisions growers -- and consumers -- make about food and agriculture.
As we look ahead to the life of the film, we feel professional meetings like these will be an important forum for the documentary. We're observing these meetings with an eye to how to develop educational versions, online materials and in-depth segments to help other professionals think differently -- creatively, sustainably and responsibly -- about other industries.
In today's media-saturated world, documentary filmmakers are spending more time connecting their work to niche audiences and target groups. We are constantly collecting names of organizations, institutions and educational programs that will be interested in the film and the story it tells. If you know of anyone who you think should be on our list, please let us know.
Greetings! This newsletter has been silent for many months, but we've been busy and productive. We're back from the first of three consecutive shoots -- excited to be gathering the lion's share of material we need to put this documentary together. Costa Rica, the home of Chiquita headquarters and the Rainforest Alliance's first efforts in the banana fields, was our first stop.
We followed Padre Vargas into the sea of bananas around his parish in Siquierres for evening services. In recent years, he has largely put aside the mantle of international activist and is trying to offer comfort to a handful of rural communities who gather weekly for mass. While he grudgingly acknowledges the reforms he has witnessed on the farms, he refuses to offer undue praise to companies who fail to share the bounty of harvest with their workers. His blistering criticisms are as strong as his devotion to the tiny communities around Siquierres.
Greetings! The newsletter is back! After several months of research, our banana film has now steamed back into production with a recent shoot and a hefty travel schedule planned for the coming months. Our first stop was Dominica, the self-proclaimed "Nature Isle", the last truly forested island in the Windward Caribbean, where we hoped to encounter a story of boom and bust banana industry, international protectionism, fragile economies and the struggle of free trade against fair. We found that and more.
The story of this tiny island forms a crucial part of our own story. The fate of the small farmer is inextricably linked to the actions of multinational firms. While actual social and environmental reforms by the big banana companies could positively affect vast numbers of the world's banana workers and huge tracts of land, the fortunes of the small farmer are a political, cultural and emotional touchstone in today's debates about agricultural policy and global trade. This is easy to see in the fields. We spent a day watching Richie Charles, his son, and four day laborers rush to harvest, select, carry, box and weigh their fruit--and get it to port before closing time. Their sense of urgency, the importance of those few acres of land in their lives, their dependence on unseen faces in foreign grocery stores mixed with their warmth and kindness to bring the issues very quickly from the macro level to the micro. It's something we hope the film will convey.
Danny Lugay's radio show is a primary conduit for information about new environmental and social practices on the island. It is part of his job now to justify sustainable practices to farmers who, over the years, have had to assume the costs and labor increases connected to many changes in the business--from sleeving bananas to boxing on the farm--without necessarily feeling the benefits. European retailers' and Fair Trade's rising standards, which include controlling pesticide use, promoting natural weed control and improving worker safety, are designed to benefit farmers, consumers and the environment alike. While no truly independent certification like the Rainforest Alliance exists on the island, rising consciousness throughout the European market is bringing improvement to the fields. "Banana Time's" infectious calypso theme song -- "steady quality banana... that's the challenge..."--is now both a cheer for economic stability and sustainable agriculture.
For more information, see www.junglebaydominica.com.
Onward... We're currently planning trips to Ecuador and Costa Rica. The next stop is Ecuador where we'll be examining the world's largest export economy, contentious labor issues, and the Rainforest Alliance's successes with other major banana companies.
Greetings and Happy New Year to all the supporters of our documentary. I'm eager to update you all on our progress; the end of 2005 was a busy time for our film. In December, Hope Hall and I returned from a successful first shoot in Costa Rica laden with footage from the banana fields, new friends and contacts, and fresh ideas to help us shape the full film. In addition, I'm pleased to report great news on the financial front--a significant contribution from the Kendeda Sustainability Fund of the Tides Foundation means that production will be in full swing this year. 2006 promises to be busy, not just for the film but in the world of bananas as well. While we were in the field, changes in tariff regulations on worldwide banana imports were announced. The stakes in the banana business are high these days. Which, as I'm learning, is business as usual.
The grant is staggered over three years. While it does not cover our full budget, the Fund's support does mean that we expect to film the large majority of the documentary this year. It also means that the Kendeda Sustainability Fund will be with us through the life of the project, providing support as we shape the film and, importantly, design outreach programs to bring the story to those who can best apply it to their own work. Furthermore, their backing puts us in a much stronger position as we look to other funding sources.
One of the biggest factors in our favor during the application process--in addition to the power of the story itself--was the support we've already received from you. The involvement of our advisory board and every individual donor gave us the momentum we needed. So again, many thanks to everyone who has been a part of this project so far. We're many steps closer to a finished film!
Prior to entering the farms, we'd heard both the rosy portrait of certification's victories and the skeptics' view that employees, frightened for their jobs, will always tell auditors exactly what they want to hear. What we witnessed was much more of a dance, a constant negotiation for better environmental and labor practices, an imperfect but promising building of trust on both sides.
Since our return, I've added two people to the staff. Our new assistant editor, Erik Satre, has been busy logging, digitizing and evaluating the hours of footage we carried home. Erik hails from Vermont where he launched his television career making a magazine show for the Department of Agriculture. He works in NYC in film and commercials.
Jennifer Samuels is the latest addition to our group. She is a recent graduate of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs and currently works in photography and documentary film. She has worked and traveled extensively in the Caribbean, including two years volunteering for the Peace Corps on the island of Dominica.
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Thanks to Reybanpac CEO, Rafael Wong, we not only travelled from Guayaquil to the banana fields in record time, we also had the opportunity to see a day in the life of the banana business through his eyes. As the country's second largest producer, Rafael Wong has a unique perspective on the world banana market. And as one of the few Ecuadorian producers who has prioritized environmental responsibility, he's added another layer of complexity to his business. His view of the business takes in the macro and the micro at the same time. Meanwhile, Hope got to shoot the fields from a wonderful perspective.
Our micro-portraits in Ecuador bring the cutthroat nature of the banana business to life. Unlike in other countries with long-term contracts, bananas there are often bought and sold on the day they're cut. The price fluctuates dramatically from week to week, from Monday to Friday, and from morning to evening. In addition to grappling with being undersold by countries that are closer to Europe (and don't therefore pay to send bananas through the Panama Canal), growers in Ecuador were trying to understand how to respond to their government's ongoing experimentation with fixed minimum prices. While designed to help the small farmer -- there are thousands in Ecuador -- at the time, the fixed price was sending buyers to Colombia and leaving Ecuadorian bananas to rot in the fields.
Our day with Rafael Wong was a crash course in economics and management. It was important for the film to see a decision-maker come out from behind his desk, show us around, and graciously explain how he views this world and this crop. He even agreed to sit in the back of the plane -- he usually pilots! -- so Hope could get the right angle.
Several days later, we returned to Patricia Pilar by less glamourous conveyance to check in with the desfloradoras from Reybanpac's Hacienda Norma Gisela with whom we visited and shot last year.
Their voices serve an important role in the film: they explain the banana business from a different level of magnification -- for them, it's a day-to-day source of income -- and show the vital role that bananas play in the lives and livlihoods of so many families in the region. It was wonderful to be able to show them the role they were playing in the film, too! After saying hello and catching up, Hope and I got out my i-pod so that Soraya, Marisol and their families could watch a very tiny version of our work-in-progress.
I think of these woman -- and their families and children -- every time someone in New York exhorts me to "eat local". For most people, those words connote beautiful beefsteak tomatoes and corn on the cob. When I hear "eat local", I've come to think of these women and the families their meagre wages support. There is, of course, a local and regional market for bananas, but it isn't enough to sustain the industry that sustains these communities.
Hope and I swore in advance that we wouldn't overshoot our scene of unloading bananas in Antwerp. But when we arrived at Quai 212 and saw the Chiquita Deutschland, a remnant of the Great White Fleet, moored there in the late afternoon sun -- with efficient Belgian longshoremen emptying the hull -- it was hard to resist.
The European market is vital to the banana business, and corporate responsibility is in turn important to the European market. George Jaksch, longtime Chiquita employee and current Senior Director for Corporate Responsibility, gave us a good sense of how grocery store buyers in Europe continue to use their economic muscle to demand better growing practices. Fair trade and organics have a strong following among consumers. Chiquita is trying to keep pace. The Chiquita sticker in Europe displays the Rainforest Alliance frog, part of their ongoing efforts to overcome decades of bad reputation. We talked about the big picture, but we filmed the details: the quality control, the inventory, the speed and efficiency, even the forklifts. We tried not to overshoot, but we just couldn't resist looking for an ever-better shot in the setting sun.
While Hope and I were in Amsterdam, observing the creative reuse of Chiquita boxes, Pat Scharlin and Gary Taylor took our footage to a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, where the Rainforest Alliance's agriculture programs were being showcased and discussed.
David McLaughlin, former senior manager for the environment at Chiquita and now a vice president for agriculture at World Wildlife Fund US, added to his comments in the documentary and described his personal experience working with the Rainforest Alliance to develop a certification program for all Chiquita-owned farms. Rainforest Alliance US-Canada Communications Manager, Jennifer Vogel Bass, answered questions and explained how her organization partners with other environmental groups in the Sustainable Agriculture Network to audit and promote their standards through third party certification. She noted that as of 2008, more than one million acres of farmland worldwide have earned certification -- thus reducing their environmental footprint and ensuring that the farms remain good neighbors in their communities and provide a home for wildlife.
Our back-to-back shoots couldn't have been possible without the kindness and cooperation of our subjects, and everyone who took time out of their schedules and opened their doors to our production.
Many thanks to everyone at Reybanpac in Ecuador and Chiquita, Sea Invest and the Port in Antwerp for taking time out of their busy schedules. And thanks, too, to the nice folks in Belgium who hooked us up with the inflatable corporate swag.
We're headed into the edit room now, with wonderful scene and a big story to tell. It's a challenge to convey the lessons, surprises and emotions we've experienced. But we're eager to try. Stay tuned to this spot for accounts of our progress.
The trip yielded remarkable material that reflects the style that's evolving for the film. Hope and I have been struggling to find a way to tell a big, global story while still making it personal and compelling. That's tough in 80 minutes.
So we've come up with a style we call "micro-portraits", small intimate explorations of a few individuals who bring the banana world into focus. For example, in Costa Rica, we looked at the certification work of the Rainforest Alliance through the eyes of one person. We spent time following a farm auditor, Alejandro Alvarez, who has been with the program since its beginning. He spent years working, first on the farms and then with farm managers, to understand the demands of the industry and then develop ways to give banana monoculture a smaller footprint. To an outsider, the changes on Chiquita farms -- management of pesticides, worker safety, waste systems, erosion control, etc. -- can feel small and wonky. But Alejandro's anecdotes, emotion and pride reveal their significance.
After several days learning the ins and outs of certification and acknowledging the momentous reforms that certification has brought to Chiquita (and now other) farms, we were ready to listen to voices of strident opposition. More sustainable agricultural practices have brought safe working conditions to the fields, but they don't alter the unavoidable truth that the banana business is hardest on the laborers who wake before dawn and work long hours for very little money. For their most vocal advocates, important environmental and workplace reforms are only part of the story.
No one knows this more than Padre Gerardo Vargas, who has spent decades drawing worldwide attention to abuses by the banana companies. His work, alongside the efforts of hundreds of other people and grassroots organizations, helped to publicize the horrible consequences of aerial spraying. Years ago, the pesticide DBCP was shown to cause, at its worst, sterility among those exposed. Thanks to international campaigns, these most egregious agricultural practices are largely things of the past. But the day-to-day crush of rural poverty and wage labor still weigh heavy on the shoulders of the people to whom the father ministers.
In addition to Alejandro Alvarez, we want to thank everyone at the Rainforest Alliance who helped with arrangements for the shoot, in particular, Sandra Vargas. Thanks, too, to our Chiquita minder, Irene Sandoval Arce, who kept close tabs on us on the farms, but was helpful and open to our requests. Thanks of course to Gaby Rojas, whom we met on our first exploratory shoot and who has become an intergral part of the crew. We're grateful for her help.
Roads in Dominica are winding, one-and-a-half lane ribbons draped casually over improbably steep volcanoes and river valleys. A few hours on these roads, honking at every blind, vertiginous switchback, and we understood why industrial monoculture never took root here.
But bananas did. Thanks to hard work on these mountainous slopes and protection from the British marketplace, the fruit became the engine of rural economic development. In the good times, sixty cents of every dollar that circulated on Dominica could be traced to the banana. As could the new pick-up trucks and school buses filled with educated rural children, heading to and from distant classrooms. But in the 1990s, the WTO responded to pressure from US trade representatives, Latin American countries and Chiquita. It ruled repeatedly against European protectionism in the Caribbean and sent panic through this small island. From a peak high of 7,000 farmers, now only about 800 people grow bananas on Dominica. Some people grow other crops for the local and Caribbean markets, some work in the fledgling tourism industry, many have left the island altogether. Fears about the rise in marijuana production are reportedly justified. Fair trade activists have stepped into the vacuum, working to provide remaining growers with a social and economic premium for their fruit.
Many people helped us during our shoot weeks on the island, offering advice, information and just a willingness to tell their story. Danny Lugay, communications director for the Dominica Banana Producers Limited, became our primary guide to farms and farmers.
As a former banana inspector and agricultural extension officer, he knows a huge percentage of the island's farmers. Today, as the one-man producer of "Banana Time", a bi-weekly radio program for farmers, he is frequently out in the field interviewing old friends about conditions and practices. Then, he drives back to his office overlooking the port in Roseau and puts together his show. The parallels to Jonathan Demme's highly-acclaimed recent documentary, The Agronomist, is a happy accident.
Tourism on "the nature isle" is one proposed and hotly debated solution to the economic change of fortune. When one sees the hulking shadow of the cruise ship that looms over the capital every Tuesday, the urgency of sustainable tourism becomes immediately obvious.
Sam Raphael is one of the island's eco-tourism entrepreneurs, and he generously hosted us for a night at his resort, Jungle Bay. Constructed by unemployed banana farmers, the resort is nestled high in the forest overlooking the Atlantic. It's built with recycled materials, is energy efficient and the fabulous kitchen cooks with local ingredients. The massage rooms, in spitting distance of the crashing ocean, look amazing. More importantly to us, Sam's staff was able to fix a broken clamp for our lights.
This trip, we had the opportunity to share our skills with two wonderful interns, Mackey Andrew and Aldon Bannis. The Ministry of Agriculture's youth program introduced them to us and arranged for them to participate in our project. Mackey helped tremendously on our whirlwind shoot in the field with Lennox Honychurch, the island's leading historian. Aldon carried lights and tripod on an equally busy day that took us from an interview with the Minister of Agriculture to a late-night shift at the port, where dock workers loaded the week's harvest onto Geest's Europe-bound ship. As is common in Dominica, both Aldon and Mackey ran into friends and family wherever we went, which added a warm touch to our work. We're very grateful to both of them for their time, energy and sense of humor and to the people at the Ministry of Agriculture who took the time to arrange their help. We hope we can reprise this model of working with local students in our coming shoots in other countries.
I'm very pleased to announce that our documentary project has won substantial backing from the Kendeda Sustainability Fund of the Tides Foundation. We learned the great news at the end of last year, just as we were packing our bags to leave for Costa Rica! The Kendeda Sustainability Fund was founded in 2003 to address the question: how do we live within the natural world in ways that promote community, equity, true prosperity and health. The fund's scope includes media projects and artistic responses to that question and I'm thrilled that they're encouraging us to tackle it. It's a challenge and an honor.
In December, we returned from our first trip to Costa Rica. Thanks to the time and generosity of folks from Chiquita and the Rainforest Alliance, the trip was a roaring success. By our first afternoon in San JosÈ, we were settled in at the National Archives, sifting through old photographs of banana plantations and workers.
Two days later, we left the capital, climbed over the mountains and met up with a team of three Rainforest Alliance auditors who were conducting annual inspections of farms around Gu·piles and SarapiquÌ. Led by Martha Marin of the Rainforest Alliance and accompanied by Raul Gigena, Chiquita's Corporate Social Responsibility Superintendent, the auditors dove into the fields and packinghouses at a handful of farms, clipboards in hand. We were very interested to see that the process of inspection and certification is dependent--at every level--on personal relations between individuals: from the trailblazers who designed these processes, to the auditors and managers who meet face-to-face in the fields, to the workers who must have the trust and confidence to speak frankly about their working conditions.
Against the backdrop of certification, was the process itself. Before ever seeing bananas picked or packed, Hope and I talked about how to make growing and harvesting visually interesting. Now that I've seen the process firsthand--and the speed, precision, teamwork and brute force it requires--I'm no longer worried about how to make that part of the story engaging.
In November 2005, Chiquita and the Rainforest Alliance began a visibility campaign, stickering certified bananas with a new seal. The classic Chiquita label now has the Rainforest Alliance frog hopping next to it on bananas shipped to Europe. At the end of last year, those bananas were headed to supermarkets across Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. We saw the new stickers with our very own eyes, being attached to bananas at a farm near Puerto Viejo de SarapiquÌ. The exuberant packinghouse manager there, Claudio Medina, made certain that we didn't miss it.
In Costa Rica, David Dudenhoefer at the Rainforest Alliance introduced Hope and myself to our wonderful translator, fixer and all-around arregladora. Gaby Rojas traveled with us, translated flawlessly, guided us to seemingly non-existent addresses and still had the energy and patience to coach our Spanish over dinner. We're looking forward to working with her again soon.
This can't possibly be the hardest part of the documentary process, but it's certainly not the easiest. "Just Bananas" and "Banana Futures" are still in the running. We've also latched on to "Los Bananeros" or, simply, "Bananeros". Nothing has clicked for us completely. I've turned my attention to lower-pressure brainstorming, the subtitle. The current frontrunner is: "[insert movie title here]... A corporate giant, a hunger for reform and the tyranny of the bottom line". It sounds especially good when you say it in that strange, deep, movie-trailer voice.
© 2007 Green Bananas, LLC.
Photo credits: Purcell Carson and Hope Hall for Green Bananas, © 2008 David Dudenhoefer, and © 2006 Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel