Part 2

This shows that while of valuable nutritive elements, the nineteen fresh vegetables have 11.3 parts and the ten varieties of succulent fruits have 12.1 parts, the bananas have 15.5 parts. From this it appears, also, that if the fresh fruits and vegetables were actually worth, as food, say $1.17, bananas of like weight would be worth 38 cents more.

Statements made by other analysts seem to warrant the deduction that the nutritive value of a ton of potatoes, at one cent per pound, is 19 cents more than that of a ton of bananas at the same price. There is a difference, too, in the cost of production of a ton of potatoes and the cost of raising a ton of bananas. The field for potatoes must be plowed and harrowed in the spring, the seed dropped in furrows, which are then to be covered, after which comes cultivating again and again until the time has come for digging and picking, carting, sacking and hauling, often to a distant market.

Luckily for the millions who have depended so largely on the banana for sustenance, the plant has few, if any, insect enemies and diseases, in which they differ somewhat from some fruits and tubers of the North.

Many times an assertion has been printed to the effect that Humboldt said that an acre of bananas yields forty-four times as much food as does an acre of wheat. In the year 1902 the average yield of wheat in the United States equalled 12.79 bushels, or 767.4 pounds. This had a food value equal to nearly one-third that of the average output of bananas from an acre. It is often said that one pound of bananas has as much nutrition as has a pound of beef. The truth is that one pound of beef is worth three and one-third pounds of bananas. Bananas are far enough ahead of the harvests the farmer of the North gets, without making exaggerated claims for the fruit of the tropics.

So the planter of bananas has each year four and a half times as much palatable food from an acre as the farmer gets from his potatoes: and there is the further difference that the one has bananas at no other cost than that of keeping down bush and grass and vine, that would quickly cover every spot to which the sunshine could penetrate, along the edges of the plantation. For bananas yield year after year without replanting. Each new stalk springs from the foot of its parent, grows to a height of fifteen to thirty-five feet, bears its burden of luscious fruit, and dies; but not before it has sent up from its own root new stalks to fruit and die--and so on through the centuries.

He who would grow bananas for market must plant on the border of navigable waters giving access to some harbor or anchorage where ships may safely lie while receiving the fruit. For it is easily bruised, and wetting by salt water blackens the skins, thus injuring or preventing the sale. Plantations are usually on the banks of rivers or of estuaries, but some are beside railroads, to which the fruit is carried by carts thickly carpeted with banana leaves. A cruder way is to hang a few bunches over the back of a burro or of a mule, which plods along to the shipping place.

It is evident that the entire area which can so be devoted to banana culture must be small, for most Central American and Mexican rivers are obstructed at their mouths by sandbars, over which ships cannot pass. Bluefields, Nicaragua, has been a most profitable field for banana growing, because it has a river into which sea-going ships can safely enter, and up which such ships may go fifty or sixty miles, and receive their cargoes from landings on the plantations which border the Rio Escondido. Yet millions of bunches of bananas have been shipped from the open coast of Honduras, where the one good harbor is that at Puerto Cortez.

Other millions have been shipped from Port Limón and from Bocas del Toro, in Costa Rica, whence a few hundred bunches were sent as a beginning to the United States in the year 1883. Twenty years later the port of Limón itself sent 4,174,200 bunches to the markets of the world. They brought to Costa Rica credit for producing the best bananas known.

For ages the native of banana lands was content with the fact that he got from his plantation more than enough food. Some thirty-five years ago a few bold men ventured to pay twelve or fifteen cents a bunch for a few cargoes in the Bay Islands, off the coast of Honduras, and carried them to the Gulf States. There they found they could sell the fruit, for there lived people who had traveled to the tropics, and learned to eat their foods. To-day millions of bunches are each year sold in the United States and even in Canada, and in 1902 ship-loads were sent from Costa Rica direct to Europe. That little republic alone received not less than $1,127,400 for bananas sold abroad during the year that ended with September, 1902.

The United Fruit Company, of Boston, was formed in the year 1888, and ten years later was said to have a surplus of more than $6,000,000, owned thousands of acres of bananas, and had built expressly for its fruit carrying business four superb steamers, and employed many others.

It is safe to assume that more than $6,000,000 was paid in the year 1902, in Central America alone, to planters of bananas. Nearly all of that was paid by products of American farms, factories and forests. Farmer, manufacturer and miner, lumberman, railroad man and sailor, merchant and broker of this country, are all concerned in and benefited by the work done in shady aisles beneath banana leaves on the banks of tropic rivers.

Bananas reach their best estate on the low, deep alluvium near the Caribbean coast, where the temperature never sinks below 60° and is seldom below 80° F. Such low lands serve all the better if flooded two or three times in the year, for the banana will drink much water, and such floods bring silt from the hills, and thus keep the ground fertilized without cost to the owner. In 1897 famed banana fields of the Rio Escondido were so deeply flooded that the steamship “Saga” voyaged through the main streets of Rama, fully sixty miles from the mouth of the river, to pick off from their roofs the dwellers in that town. The bananas barely showed their tops above the yellow flood. Along the coast flew reports that the plantations were ruined; subscriptions were asked to help the planters: and three months later they were harvesting better crops than in years before. Their plantations had been so enriched that they bore most bountifully.

Bananas may be grown wherever there is some moisture and no near approach to the frost line; but a touch of frost cuts down the banana as a breath from a fiery furnace would blight a tender lily. The city of Tegucigalpa is 3,600 feet above the level of the sea, yet in that town is a field some thirty feet above the current in the swift river which it borders. It is very dry during months of each year, but in that field are plátanos which reach a height of more than twenty feet and bear bunches enough comfortably to support the owner. In narrow cañon and wider valley near that place are many patches of bananas which bring to their planters a sufficient income. And at that altitude the mercury sometimes falls below 65° Fahrenheit.

In the land of bananas, cats, dogs and pigs, mules, horses and cattle, parrots, babies and all other domestic animals thrive on this perfect nature-food, when they can get it. I have seen an Indian woman pry open with her fingers the jaws of a baby peccary, and with a gruel of green bananas choke off its incessant, rasping cry of “ma, ma!” And the next instant she put that same calabash of gruel to the lips of her own babe of three or four months. I’ve seen other Indians feed infant tapir, suckling jaguar, skinny squabs of parrots and very young monkeys on such pap, which those folk call wabool. I, myself, have safely carried abandoned cardinals through from their infant days of a beggarly few pin feathers to those of full regimentals of brilliant scarlet and epaulets of jet; and they were as overflowing with joyful song and saucy happiness as they could have been had worms and bugs been the chief of their diet every day of their lives, instead of the bananas on which they had been largely fed.

Why not, indeed, when cakes and beer, brandy and sugar, pies, puddings and sauce, and many another thing good for man to take for his stomach’s sake, are made from bananas. So, too, are paper and laces, brushes and cloth, and cordage enough to pull up the earth by its roots, if only we had a place to hook the tackle.

When he has set out an acre or two of bananas, the planter need have no fears for the future. He has ample insurance against such privations as come from illness, accident or old age: and they who by a little labor pay for such insurance share each day its material benefits. No need for them to die that others may enjoy the blessings of such wise provision; nor need the planter toil with hoe or spade, cultivator or plow. It may be he will slash away with machete such vine or sapling, grass or weed as happens to obstruct his path; but as a whole he interferes as little as possible with the operations of kindly Mother Nature. She is more than ready to do his work: he is willing to let her do it.

He whose acre of bananas has been well planted has on it 225 hills, or 900 stalks. Each stalk will give him a bunch which, on rich, new ground, should weigh 60 pounds, say 54,000 pounds each 12 or 14 months. That is the theory. The fact seems to be that the average yield is really 175 to 300 full bunches to the acre per annum, say a mean of 270 bunches weighing about 16,000 pounds. The average yield reported all along the Caribbean shore and from Jamaica, during a dozen years, equaled 270.95 full bunches an acre per annum.

In the year 1902 the average yield of potatoes in the United States was 80.44 bushels per acre, and the average farm value was 49 cents per bushel, or $39.45 an acre. In Costa Rica the average price of bananas on the plantation was equal to at least 27 cents a bunch. At that figure 261 bunches would bring $70.47. In August, 1903, the price was raised to 31 cents a bunch on contracts to run three to five years; which should give $84.00 per acre each year. That is a cash difference of $44.55 in favor of the man whose bananas raised themselves for him. There was another difference in his favor, for his fruit may be eaten green or ripe, raw or roasted, boiled or fried, with fish, flesh or fowl, or with none of these.

Those who dwell in the mountain regions, far from the ports whence bananas are shipped, dip in lye and dry in the sun many a plátano. It is then shriveled, moldy-looking and altogether unlovely; but if kept dry it remains sweet and wholesome many a year. It may be eaten uncooked, when it is a gummy, sugary paste; but drop it into scalding water, put it into a hot oven, or stick it up beside the fire, and it becomes mightily puffed up, tender and savory. It might be sent thus dried to feed the people of the North or of Europe, for it would be easily packed and carried.

Naturally the intelligent planter concerns himself mainly with the question: What is the cost, the yield and the profit of banana growing? There are evidences that many people in the North feel a lively curiosity about the same points.

Before one can give a trustworthy reply to such question he must study the evidence of those who have had opportunity to learn the truth, and he should be able to present the general averages of the results shown by many such witnesses. The planter of medium ability and industry may confidently expect to attain the average results; he who has less intelligence and thrift should not complain if he fails to get as good returns; he who shows more than common skill, application and energy will win greater reward than is shown by the average of the banana-growing of the many, as in other occupations great skill and industry bring the larger rewards.

Reports covering years of experience by thousands of planters in the West Indies and along the Atlantic coast of Mexico and of Central America, indicate that the cost per acre of making banana plantations and cultivating and harvesting the first crop therefrom, the yield in bunches and the income, are as shown in the following table:

===========+=========+=========+=========+========= Countries | Bunches | Income | Cost | Profit Costa Rica | 250.0 | $ 70 67 | $ 28 84 | $ 41 83 Guatamala | 267.5 | 124 36 | 42 80 | 81 56 Honduras | 294.0 | 121 13 | 18 97 | 102 16 Jamaica | 288.0 | 109 48 | 27 58 | 81 90 Mexico | 280.0 | 123 61 | 28 12 | 95 49 Nicaragua | 246.2 | 86 36 | 22 07 | 64 29 -----------+---------+---------+---------+--------- Averages | 270.95 |$ 105 94 | $ 28 06 | $ 77 87 ===========+=========+=========+=========+=========

From the foregoing it appears that the general average yield per acre during the twenty years covered by the figures given, was 270.95 bunches per acre; the average cost per acre was $28.06, which was only 10.3 cents per bunch. The profit per bunch was 28.7 cents, or 287.9 per cent.

A report dated August 1, 1903, by Las Haciendas de Santa Clara, Costa Rica, which has 550 acres of bananas in full bearing, and where wages are one colon or 47 cents per diem, gives the cost of cultivating and delivering the fruit at the railroad, as $17.69 per acre, the yield at 173 bunches and the income at $54.90 annually. That shows that the bananas cost 10.2 cents per bunch, and that the profit was 20.8 cents a bunch, or 200 per cent. But as the fruit is sold five years ahead at those figures, the small percentage of profit may be regarded as a fair return for the investment, combined as it is with an assurance of continued gain.

There are those who insist that the higher results shown in the foregoing table may easily be obtained by any one who will give as much thought and labor to growing bananas as are required for the successful raising of corn or of potatoes. It is true that the figures on which the averages shown are based were, in many cases, from the experience of native and other planters of little diligence and skill, and that they got smaller results than might easily have been obtained. It may be possible that if one will allow two or three stalks to rise from each stand of bananas, and together mature their fruit, he many get 444 to 780 bunches from an acre each of a few years, and that in such a case he might get $185 to $278 for the crop; but it will be clear to all that he who expects to make only 270 bunches per annum from an acre, and get only $78 profit therefrom, will be safer than he who invests his money with the expectation of making greater gains.

The Hand Book of Nicaragua, published by the Bureau of American Republics, which is under the direction of the U. S. Department of State, says:

There is, perhaps, no industry in Central America that is more attractive to men of small capital than banana growing, from the fact that the clearing of the land is effected cheaply, and from the small cost of after-cultivation, which is limited only to such clearing of weeds and undergrowth as may be sufficient to allow access to the trees, and the short time necessary to produce a paying crop. When the trees and brush that have been cut in clearing the land become sufficiently dry, they are burned, and the banana suckers are then planted among the charred remains and ashes, without any further preparation of the soil. The best results are obtained by giving the trees plenty of space, say from 15 to 18 feet apart. In about ten months the first fruit can be gathered; but in the second year the trees reach maturity, and by a proper management of the fruit stalks in a fair sized plantation a constant succession in the crop may be secured, and fruit gathered every week throughout the year.