Some 500 banana producers in Ecuador gave away boxes of fruit during a protest caravan this Monday in Guayaquil, as a result of the millionaire losses that accumulate due to the effects of the war in Ukraine and the consequent fall in the internal price , with millionaire losses for the industry.
In Colombia, the impact has been similar, which is why the leaders of the Colombian banana associations Augura and Asbama are in Europe looking for solutions to the crisis facing the sector due to rising input costs and the challenges posed by Fusarium Race 4 Tropical fungus, among others.
“We have been working in coordination with the National Government and with the different Latin American actors in the chain to turn to European parliamentarians and businessmen (our main market) and find measures that allow us to balance the loads and safeguard the production of the fruit, which is paid a fair price, in addition to the subsistence of the more than 800,000 families that depend on agribusiness in Latin America”, assured the president of Augura, Emerson Aguirre Medina.
Together with representatives from Ecuador and Guatemala, they met in Brussels with members of the European Parliament. What they are looking for is that the conditions of the producers be improved because they believe that the “From farm to table” strategy, which aims to promote the production and consumption of more sustainable food in the Old Continent, has generated a change in the agricultural system generating higher production costs and lower prices.
“We are going to Brussels with the intention of sensitizing members of the European Parliament to the situation that banana producers in the country are currently going through. We are a sector that generates more than 50,000 decent jobs in Colombia, that carries out impactful social work in the communities of influence and that complies with all the production and quality standards required by the European Union, but we are currently threatened,” he said . José Francisco Zúñiga, president of Asbama, who highlighted the constant attempts by large European supermarkets to lower the price of fruit in international markets.
WHAT THE UNIONS ASK FOR:
Given this, they made a declaration in which they demand that the trend of low prices be reversed with the justification of offering the cheapest fruit in the world, which, they say, is not consistent with sustainability and living wage policies.
“We want to exhort the entire banana value chain, extended to the consumer, to become aware of how foolish it is that to date bananas must travel thousands of kilometers to reach their supermarkets and, eventually, their tables. , is paid at a lower cost, at a lower price, than fruits that are sometimes produced in the same localities,” said Julio Mérica, from the Association of Independent Banana Producers of Guatemala (Apib).
Likewise, Juan José Pons, coordinator of the Ecuadorian banana cluster, declared that the price trend that has been maintained by the European distribution system must be reversed. “It is not consistent with the policies of demands that allow us to continue paying the living wage, nor to maintain the green policy, nor the strategy of the farm to the table”, he expressed.
In the joint statement, they also called on European international organizations to form an alliance for the management of international resources with the aim of combating Tropical Race 4 Fusarium and Black Sigatoka.
In addition, they called for the promotion and support of a security agenda against the contamination of containers with narcotics, as well as the control of drug trafficking in consumer countries.