Caribbean Banana Farmers Going Organic

Financial Times (London)

November 13, 2001 Caribbean banana producers see future in organic farming: Canute James on farm incentives
for organically produced fruit:

By CANUTE JAMES

Farmers in the eastern Caribbean's Windward Islands, uncertain of how long they will continue to enjoy
preferential access to the European banana market, are turning to the growing market for organically grown fruit.

The Windward Islands, the main source of bananas consumed in the UK, will soon begin exporting more organic
fruit to the UK.

The farmers are receiving assistance from their regional marketing agency, and from Sainsbury's, the UK
supermarket chain, which already handles growing quantities of organically produced fruit and vegetables and
which has promised a guaranteed market to the islands' producers. The agreement is intended to take advantage
of growing demand for food produced without chemicals.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the estimated value of global sales of organic fruit and
vegetables exceeds Dollars 3bn a year in 12 industrialised markets. The value has been increasing at annual rates
"generally ranging between 20 per cent and 30 per cent during the last years of the 1990s", it says.

The four Windward islands (Dominica, Grenada, St Lucia and St Vincent) are economically dependent on
agriculture - mainly bananas. Their favourable access to the European market caused a dispute between the US
and the EU, and they fear that changes set for 2006 will lead to a loss of market share.

The diversification into organic bananas and other fruit is also expected to ease problems caused by falling
exports of traditionally produced bananas, which have halved over the past decade to 140,500 tonnes last year.

Sainsbury's estimates that an initial volume of about 2,500 boxes of organic bananas a week (weighing 15kg-18kg
each) will be shipped to the UK from the Windward islands from the middle of next year.

It anticipates that in the longer term, organic banana export volumes will reach 10 per cent of the current
Windward Islands' exports.

As well as organic bananas, Sainsbury's is encouraging farmers to grow organic mangoes and passion fruit, with
the hope that these will also begin to appear on its shelves from the middle of 2002.

David Bowen, the FAO representative for Trinidad and Tobago and Surinam, says the UK and Italy are among the
fastest-growing markets for organic food.

"Organic production offers opportunities for developing countries. Domestic production in developed countries is
expected to rise within the next few years, but it is unlikely to meet demands for most products," he says.

Regional farming officials say, however, that the islands' farmers will be challenged to maintain adequacy of
standards and volumes to meet suppliers' needs. The small, mountainous islands do not have many areas
amenable to farming that are virgin land. Tracts that can be used have already been subject to chemicals, and
will need some time for the traces of these to be eradicated. Farmers have traditionally used chemicals because
they help raise productivity. But officials say that the lower yields will be offset by higher prices.

Still, high prices for organic food may not be permanent, says Judith-Ann Francis, co-ordinator of the fruit crops
project of the Inter-American Institute for Co-operation on Agriculture. "As the demand grows and production and
supply constraints are overcome, the high prices which organic foods once attracted will decline and stabilise,"
she says.