Dan Koeppel's Blog

The Democracy Now radio program interviewed Nicholas Kozloff, who argued that there’s a Chiquita connection in the current Honduran political crisis, which saw President Manuel Zelaya deposed in either a coup or a constitutional emergency, or both, depending on which side you’re on, in June. The banana industry once made Honduras its largest exporting nation; [...]

CBS’s “60 Minutes” reran its May, 2008 segment, called “The Price of Bananas,” on Chiquita’s payments to a Colombian paramilitaries. New information included the extradition of a member of that group to the U.S., confirmation by additional sources, and the expansion of an investigation of similar alleged payments made by Dole.

Watch the report. Read a transcript.

Related [...]

From Danforth’s flickr stream.
Writer/comedian Danforth France saw this Dole freighter unloading in San Diego while he was attending last week’s Comic-Con, and he sent me the linked tweet.
The ship is the Dole Honduras – one of two that constitute the banana giant’s Pacific fleet. The vessel makes over 20 annual north-south trips along a route that [...]

Huggable, lovable – but not the kind of baby banana that I’m talking about.
Though the vast majority of bananas we buy – statistically, all – are of the endangered Cavendish variety, there’s a good chance you’ve seen something else, these days and if you’re a banana-type (or have become one), you might have wondered: what [...]

That’s my beloved local Sev. To zoom in, you’ve got to go there. So go.
Interesting strategy at my favorite local convenience store, on the corner of Sunset Blvd. and Rosemont In the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles (just steps from Dodger Stadium.)
Instead of the typical branded, presented-in-a-box fruit Chiquita is selling in many U.S. convenience [...]

Spending the week in the great north country of New Hampshire and saw this sign adorning the entrance to a convenience store. No bananas of any kind inside, though. “We sold ‘em for 79 cents each, and you could buy a whole pound for that at the IGA down the street,” the clerk told [...]

This exclusive report copyright 2008 www.bananabook.org.
Two of the world’s biggest banana companies, the American chemical companies who supply them, along with several other companies they do business with, are being sued by pilots, ground crew, and residents of the Ecuadorian plantation town of Puerto Viejo for health damage they allegedly suffered during years of spraying [...]

Photo from Prudential Cape Shores Real Estate. Link Below.

Lorenzo Dow Baker – founder of the American banana industry. Now you can live in his house. Photo: Library of Congress.
This home – which sits on ten acres within the Cape Cod National Seashore, in Massachusetts, was the birthplace of Lorenzo Dow Baker, the sea captain whose [...]