Worldwide banana trade

Bananas are the most important traded fruit in the world and the most important fruit in the diet in most Western countries. It is the fourth most important food product within the least developed countries being staple food for some 400 million people.

There are about 1000 varieties of banana trees in more than 150 countries, producing around 105 to 120 million tones of fruit a year.

Around a quarter of banana production finds its way into a world trade worth over $8bn. Moreover, bananas still form a critical part of the economics of many Central American, South American and Caribbean countries.

What distinguished the international banana trade from other fruit and commodity trade is the intensity of its politics and the importance of the major companies involved.

For over a hundred years, the multinationals – currently Chiquita (formerly the United Fruit Company), Dole, and Del Monte – have dominated the trade.

The UN Conference on Trade and Development (2011) estimates that the top five banana companies (Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte, Fyffes and Noboa) account for more than 70 per cent of the global export market for bananas. These companies serve functions ranging from production to processing to trading of bananas.

The high level of capital investment and technical expertise required for production, and especially sea transport in specialized vessels, and the important of and ownership - constitute large – but not insuperable – barriers to entry in the industry.

Today world trade of banana is still characterized by a high concentration of key players: five countries, four of which are in Latin America – Ecuador, Columbia, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Philippines represents 11.6 MT of exports in 2010 from total of worldwide 13.9 MT.

The United States and EC-27 each imported approximately 27 percent of all bananas traded internationally in 2012, while other importers operated at a much smaller scale.
Worldwide banana trade