The Gates Foundation has received a 57,000 strong petition denouncing its support for a 'biopirated' GM banana program in Africa, and calling on it to suspend a feeding trial on US students, writes Vanessa Amaral-Rogers. The banana threatens both the health of the students, say campaigners, and the future of African agriculture.
If you have bought bananas or pineapples in a supermarket recently did you know that many of the workers that plant, pack and grow them live in poverty?
The Dominican Republic's organic and Fairtrade boom has helped banana growers but what about the slum-dwelling Haitian migrant workers? Tom Levitt reports on the plight of the forgotten people in the banana trade
The documentary Bananas! highlighted plight of Nicaraguan banana plantation workers who brought a legal case in the US against the use of a banned pesticide DBCP by the Dole Food Company. Tom Levitt reports
The economies of whole islands in the Caribbean face ruin if the WTO, acting at the behest of US-owned multinationals, forces the EU to end preferential trade agreements with small-scale West Indian banana producers
What could be more cheerful than this ubiquitous breakfast fruit? But if you’re not buying them Fairtrade and organic, argues Ed Hamer, then you’re buying into a modern agricultural scandal
