Dan Koeppel's Blog

PLUS: See the film in New York Wednesday, October 21, at 7:15 PM. Details here.

After pressure from the Swedish government  - efforts to boycott the banana company were underway, with a strong chance they would spread to other EU nations – Dole dropped a lawsuit it had filed against Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten and [...]

The following is the original English text of an article I wrote for Dagens Nyheter, the largest daily newspaper in Sweden. The story is about Dole’s attempt to stop the distribution of “BANANAS!*”, a documentary made by Swedish filmmaker Fredrik Gertten that the banana company believes to be untrue. The film is about lawsuits filed [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The biggest news item I avoid in this blog are banana trade wars. That’s because it would take me thousands and thousands of words to explain why the U.S., Europe, and the big banana companies have been fighting for years over who gets to sell bananas where. There have been resolutions that have led to [...]

The new record holder, blocks from my house. A buck and a half a pound for what? “Very sweet” bananas? Not even organic. These were at the weekly farmers market held on Sunset Boulevard in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles. The genuine fresh produce offered there is great (this week, the strawberries were awesome), [...]

Panama Disease-ravaged plantation in Asia (from Plant Health Progress.)
In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre – for the first time – publicly acknowledged the existence of Panama Disease (the incurable malady that wiped out the world’s banana crop in the first half of the 20th century, and that has devastated much [...]

My Dad sent this one in; it comes from Andy the Hobo Traveler’s blog. Andy discovered the single-serve fruits at a 7-11 in Manilla; each banana costs about a quarter. “I can purchase one banana without them getting angry,” Andy writes. “I am single, not married, to buy bananas even in the market is annoying, [...]