A Different Perspective

The bunch of bananas that I bought had Del Monte stickers on them. After reading “Why Can’t People Feed Themselves” in the Annual Editions Anthropology book and watching "Life and Debt", I wondered where this banana came from when I bought it. Was I enjoying it at the expense of someone else living in Guatemala or Jamaica? The article in Annual Editions wrote that plantations often held much of the land idle simply to keep peasants from using it, even today! In Guatemala, Del Monte uses only 9000 out of the 57,000 acres they own! This was to “undercut self-provisioning agriculture and thus make rural populations dependent on plantation wages” (p160). Was this banana grown and picked by someone who was forced to work on a plantation because he was not allowed to be self-sufficient on his own land? Is the person who picked this banana suffering from lack of food and proper nutrition while I ate this banana on top of three other meals and a numerous number of snacks that day? This shows me how ignorant I am about where the food I eat comes from. I don’t think my perspective on Del Monte bananas (and perhaps other foods in the future) will ever be quite the same again.