20 Taking Stock
bananas are an all-day, anytime snack whose versatility ranges from ice
cream sundaes to the stock ingredient in many baby foods.
Under a pleasant blue sky with white pockets of clouds, my two
uncles and I were traveling in the northeast region of Costa Rica, some
sixty miles from where Columbus first came ashore. Instead of the
diverse tropical lowland that greeted Columbus, surrounding us was
a monoculture landscape of broad-leaved, adult-height, green banana
plants. At the time of our excursion, Costa Rica, roughly the size of
West Virginia, was the world’s second-largest exporter of bananas.
Following instructions that only lovable Costa Ricans can give, I
turned left at the next jog in the two-lane highway, just past the last
gas station when leaving town. The dirt lane meandered left and then
right as it cut through a working plantation. Snaking in and out among
the rows of bananas were tram lines, suspended some six feet in the air
by cables and supported by steel arches placed along the ground.
Bananas grow best in humid tropical environments. With a fully
ripe bunch weighing 60 to 0 pounds, harvesting bananas is labor
intensive. To cope with the heat and humidity, workers arrive in the
fields early each morning. My uncles and I watched how, after placing
bars of padding between the tiers or “hands” forming each bunch, one
worker steadied the bunch on his shoulder, while another wielding a
sharp machete sliced through its stem with one fell swoop. Freed from
the plant, the bunch was secured to the overhead cable.
On this plantation, human runners transported bunches to a cen-
trally located opening where they were cut up and boxed for shipping.
We watched as a runner, outfitted in knee-high rubber boots, bound to-
gether a long rack of bunches, then attached the rope to a thick strap
around his waist. Taking a deep breath, he lunged forward, fighting for
momentum while digging his boots into the loose dirt to gain traction.
Like a train of railcars pulled by a locomotive, the long rack
lurched forward, and, once under way, the runner quickened his pace.
As he loped through the fields trying not to fall while maintaining
momentum, he crossed drainage ditches spanned with single wooden
planks. Like most workers on the plantation, he was paid piecework.
By the time he arrived at the off-load site, having wound his way
back and forth several times across sections of the plantation, he was