Bananas

By Bob Gariano

Last week Sunset Foods in Settlers Square had bananas on sale for 59 cents per pound. Sometimes, when a current shipment reaches a stage of ripening when the bananas are only several days from being unsalable, they are reduced to 39 cents per pound. At this time of year in the frozen temperate zones of the world it seems almost incongruous that this fragile tropical fruit can be easily purchased at our local grocery store for such a bargain price. The supply chain of the bananas at grocery stores like Sunset Foods is a complex choreography of international merchants, wholesalers, and shippers who work behind the scenes of the grocery retailer to bring consumers this product.

Primate favorite

I like bananas so much that my family sometimes suggests that I must have some gorilla forebears in my background. They are somewhat misguided in this thinking. Gorillas are known to be almost exclusively herbivorous, however, they inhabit areas where bananas are largely unknown and most gorillas are unfamiliar with bananas. Humans eat many more bananas than gorillas in spite of the cartoon image of these great apes.

I am not the only one who likes bananas. There are approximately 91 million metric tons of bananas grown each year. Based on an average weight of 130 grams per banana, this equals a total worldwide crop of 720 billion bananas or more than 100 bananas for every person in the world each year. For retailers bananas are a staple. Wal-Mart, the worlds largest retailer with annual sales approaching one half trillion dollars, sold more bananas by unit count than any other single item last year.

International Supply Chain

Getting all of these bananas to market requires a modern supply chain and this starts with the plantations where the bananas are grown. Banana plantations like those in Central America are almost always based on economies of scale. The trees, which are actually classified by botanists as a type of herb, are grown on plantations that can be as large as 100 square kilometers.

The common banana takes about nine months to grow on the tree before it is harvested by manual labor while still green. The bananas are picked in large bunches that weigh up to 150 pounds each. The bunches are then collected into on site packing sheds where they are separated into smaller bunches called hands. These hands are inspected, washed, wrapped, and packaged for shipment.

The inspection process is crucial to the quality of the product. The United Nations Agricultural Organization estimates that 35% of all the picked bananas are rejected at the plantation because they do not meet strict cosmetic requirements set by wholesalers and retailers. We want our bananas to be free of spots and other blemishes and this is a difficult challenge in a product that is easily bruised in handling.

The boxes of green bananas are transported from the plantations in refrigerated trucks or by refrigerated rail cars. The lower shipping temperatures keep the bananas green and unripened for the next leg of their journey. The product is then transferred to ocean going vessels that carry the bananas to warehouses in the country where they are to be distributed and then sold to consumers.

Ethylene Gas

These banana warehouses are special facilities. The bananas are ripened in the warehouses by using a combination of ethylene gas and somewhat elevated storage temperatures. This allows shippers to transport the green bananas which are less liable to be damaged or bruised in their unripened condition and then ripen the product closer to the retail outlets.

Ethylene gas, which serves as a ripening agent and plant hormone, is a simple hydrocarbon molecule made up of two atoms of carbon linked to four atoms of hydrogen. The gas is the most common hydrocarbon substance synthesized by industry and it is also produced naturally by most growing plants. It is an odorless, colorless gas that can be highly flammable in the correct stoichiometric mixture with air, so the banana warehouses are carefully controlled and monitored.

Farmers discovered this capability for ethylene to ripen food crops quite by accident. Shippers noted that lemons stored in warehouses that were heated by kerosene heaters turned from green to yellow much faster that lemons stored in electrically heated space. One of the by products of the combustion of kerosene is ethylene gas and this was catalyzing the ripening process. Today, avocados, citrus fruits, tomatoes, decorative flowers, and bananas all use ethylene as a ripening hormone.

Ripening Fruit

The ethylene gas that is naturally produced by ripening fruits and vegetables can be harnessed by homeowners. Tomatoes, bananas, and other produce can be ripened faster if they are stored in paper bags where the ethylene that they naturally produce is contained. Conversely, the best way to conserve and lengthen the shelf life of produce is to leave it in a space which has free air flow and does not allow the ethylene to concentrate.

The convenient and inexpensive availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in our grocery stores even in the middle of a cold northern winter is almost taken for granted by modern consumers. The colorful displays of high quality fresh tomatoes, bananas, citrus fruits, and vegetables in our supermarkets and local grocery outlets owes much to a sophisticated and unseen supply chain of growers, shippers, wholesalers, and packers who work hard to bring these commodities to our tables.

Bob Gariano is President of RGA, an executive search firm that recruits senior executives and board members for public and private companies. Bob can be reached at rgariano@robertgariano.com