Farming and Bananas

I'm always interested in farming, I found this bit on bananas in the Philippines at Freakonomics in the comments (general post on bananas):

I’m from the Philippines and we do grow a lot of bananas. Most of the banana plantations are in Mindanao because of the stable climate conditions and fertile soil. The crops from from these plantations are only for export, and they only grow Cavendish there. The bananas they pick are still unripe when harvested to keep them firm durig transportation.

About the condition of the employees. Right now, employees of large companies like Dole and Del Monte experience fair labor practices. Most of the land of the plantations were under Agrarian reform, so the farmers own the land, which they rent to the companies to plant. The farmers are hired as employees, so aside from rent from land, they also get wages, and they have a stable job. These gives them incentives to be more productive, and hence higher manufacturing efficiency.

But this was not the case 30 years ago, before land reform. Farmers were tenants, and they were planting the land which were owned by really rich families. They had no security of tenure. They were overworked and underpaid, and yes, there were no healthcare benefits. there was also child labor: children of farmers would rather skip school and help in planting to increase family income. Also sometimes, there were unjust land owners. They have control over the farmers and their families because they feared being thrown away from from the farms, their only livelihood and their homes. [Is the land reform significant--wish I could find a study of the land tenure arrangements across the world. I'm speaking as a descendant of someone who was a renter in Ireland but owned a large estate (by Irish standards) in Illinois by the time he died.]

And in the Philippines, bananas are staple foods, specially in the really poor provinces where rice and corn are very expensive.