Part 3

The only careful work necessary on a banana plantation is in handling the heavy bunches so as to avoid bruising them, as any such injury causes a black spot to appear, beneath which decay quickly begins as the fruit ripens. The natives have learned by experience when they cut into the fruit stalk so to gauge the strength of the blow as to cut just deep enough to cause the stalk to bend slowly over until the end of the bunch reaches the ground, when another slash with the machete severs it, and it is loaded carefully into the cart.

A plantation of 40 manzanas (about 69 acres) will, during and after the second year, produce about 54,000 bunches. The lowest price paid for bunches for some years past is 37½ cents per bunch, which would give an annual value of the crop of $20,250, or more than double the expenditure for purchase of land, clearing, cultivating and gathering the crop, and all expenses to the end of the second year.

As the cost of producing bananas after the first crop from a plantation is confined to cultivating and harvesting, which may be done for $10 per acre yearly, it is scarcely wonderful that Judge O’Hara, late U. S. Consul at Greytown, Nicaragua, a lawyer whose acute mind is trained to sifting evidence, reported to the Department of State at Washington regarding banana-growing on the Atlantic coast of that republic, that:

It seems reasonably certain that bananas on the Bluefields River pay better than many crops in the United States. * * * * These figures would seem to indicate that at the end of a year a planter having 36 acres of bananas under cultivation would have $3,847.32 left after paying for all necessary labor and provisions--figures apt to bring discontent to an American farmer having but 36 acres of wheat or corn; and especially so when he compares the price of his land, ranging from $15 to $80 per acre, with that of land in eastern Nicaragua, where cultivated lands may be said to have no established market value, few improved plantations having ever been sold.

Such discontent might be aggravated by consideration of the differences which exist between the results obtained from the chief eight crops of the United States and those shown by the foregoing summary of banana farming. These differences are illustrated by the following figures, those for the crops of the North showing the yield and values for the year 1897. The last column shows the difference in favor of bananas per acre:

=================+==========+==========+=================== CROPS | Yield | Value | Difference, favor | per acre | per acre | of Bananas -----------------+----------+----------+------------------- Barley, bushels | 23.11 | $12 34 | $93 59 Buckwheat, 〃 | 16.08 | 9 69 | 96 25 Corn, 〃 | 24.62 | 9 51 | 96 43 Oats, 〃 | 27.19 | 8 29 | 97 65 Potatoes, 〃 | 80.44 | 39 45 | 66 49 Rye, 〃 | 13.30 | 8 22 | 97 72 Wheat, 〃 | 12.78 | 10 11 | 95 83 Hay, tons | 1.26 | 10 93 | 95 01 Tobacco, pounds | 797.30 | 55 81 | 50 13 -----------------+----------+----------+------------------- General averages | | $18 28 | $87 66 =================+==========+==========+===================

From this it is evident that bananas give five and one-half times as much as the principal crops of the United States give the farmer for his toil.

Many native planters seem content with the returns their bananas give, and appear to have no thought of increasing that income.

“Why don’t you plant more bananas? See how well this little patch has paid,” I have said to many of them.

“Why should I do that? Have I not plenty to eat? I have enough money; if I plant more I shall have to do more work to get more money which I don’t need,” is the substance of their replies.

Years ago U. S. Consul Burchard complained of the banana business of the Honduras coast, that “A large proportion of the fruit-growers were formerly vacqueros in the interior, working on a salary of $30 to $40 a year. They are now owners of plantations, and have a steady income of $30 to $300 a month. The large amount of money distributed along this coast in exchange for fruit would make any civilized and temperate community prosperous and happy. There would be public and private schools, churches and banks, newspapers and libraries, parks and carriages, and handsome dwellings supplied with every comfort and luxury, surrounded by gardens of flowers, fruits and vegetables natural to this climate of perpetual seedtime and harvest.”

So it soon will be, for already Italian and German, Englishman and American have accepted the invitation of a most kindly Nature, and the sincere welcome of friendly natives, and cottages peep here and there from out the glossy greenery, hammocks swing beneath the never-ceasing rustle of the palms in the blessed trade winds, and the fruit of Paradise gives to all a most generous support.

But those who have good lands back from navigable water and remote from railroads, are not without hope of profit from bananas. For they may dry the fruit, pack it in dainty boxes with a liberal dusting of sugar to fill vacant spaces, and send it to the hungry millions of Europe. This has been successfully done by planters of Trinidad and of Jamaica, who, in at least some instances, found that they could sell the dried fruit at 16 to 20 cents a pound. Green bunches average nearly 60 pounds in weight, two-thirds of which is lost in peeling and drying, leaving about 20 pounds, which, at 15 cents, will give $3 per bunch. If the production of the green bananas and the drying should cost $2 a bunch, the income from an acre of bananas would be $288 yearly. In practice it has been found that the total cost and income of dried bananas give a net return of $2.72 per bunch, which equaled about $783 per acre.

Both plátanos and guineos, or ordinary yellow bananas, may be profitably dried or made into flour. This will utilize the surplus fruit and such bunches as are too small to sell to advantage. Frequent mention is made by Stanley, of banana flour in his “In Darkest Africa.” He strongly indorses its nutritive qualities, and wonders that the natives did not appear to have discovered what invaluable nourishing and easily digested food they had in the plátano and banana. He expressed the conviction that, “If only the virtues of banana flour were publicly known, it is not to be doubted but it would be largely consumed in Europe. For infants, persons of delicate digestion, dyspeptics and those suffering from temporary derangement of the stomach, the flour properly prepared would be of universal demand. During my two attacks of gastritis a light gruel of this, mixed with milk, was the only matter that could be digested.”

It is interesting to note that such a high authority as the “Dictionary of Economical Productions of India” says:

The large crop of food produced by bananas and plantains may be preserved for an indefinite period either by drying the fruit or by preparing meal from it. When the nearly ripe fruit is cut into slices and dried in the sun, a certain part of the sugar contained in the fruit crystalizes on the surface and acts as a preservative. The slices thus prepared, if made from the finer varieties, make an excellent dessert preserve, and if from the coarser, may be used for cooking in the ordinary way. They keep well if carefully packed when dry, and ought to form a valuable antiscorbutic for long voyages. The fruit may also be similarly preserved whole by stripping off the skin and drying it in the sun. Plantain meal is prepared by stripping off the husk and reducing it to powder, and finely sifting. It is calculated that the fresh core will yield 40 per cent. of this meal, and that an acre of average quality will yield over a ton.

Plantain meal is of a slightly brownish color, and has an agreeable odor, which becomes more perceptible when warm water is poured upon it, and has a considerable resemblance to that of orris root. When mixed with cold water it forms a feebly tenacious dough, more adhesive than that of oatmeal, but much less so than that of wheaten flour. When baked on a hot plate this dough forms a cake which is agreeable to the sense of smell, and is by no means unpleasant to the taste. When boiling water is poured over the meal it is changed into a transparent jelly, having an agreeable taste and smell. Boiled with water it forms a thick gelatinous mass, very much like boiled sago in color, but possessing a peculiar pleasant odor.

In this connection it may be interesting to note that, according to an analysis published in the American Analyst, New York, February 15th, 1893, the chemical composition of bananas and potatoes is almost identical, as shown by the following comparison:

Banana Potato Water 75.71 75.77 Albumenoids 1.71 1.79 Total carbonaceous matter (non-nitrogenous) 20.13 20.72 Woody fibre 1.74 .75 Ash .71 .97

Nor do the food elements in bananas and plátanos vary greatly, the sum of each being about the same.

In a communication to Kew by Mr. Louis Asser, of the Hague, Holland, it was announced that a syndicate proposes to take up the manufacture of banana and plantain meal and the preparation of dried bananas on a large scale in Dutch Guiana. The communication referred to gives the following list of commercial preparations from the banana and the plátano:

1. Dried slices of the entire fruit (pulp and peel) in the starchy state suitable for the preparation of alcohol or for making into a nourishing bread.

2. Meal in a starchy state from the pulp only for making into a superior kind of bread or porridge.

3. Flakes and meal in a dextrinous state for use in breweries or for making into nourishing soups, puddings, etc.

4. Dried peel and coarse meal prepared from it for feeding cattle and pigs.

5. Banana marmalade.

6. Dried bananas entire without peel put up like dried figs in boxes.

7. Raw alcohol from fresh bananas, and also from dried banana meal.