Are bananas too cheap

People that come and visit and see all the things you have to do to produce a box of bananas really don't understand how they can buy them so cheap in the supermarket. The farmer has an enormous amount of work and risk and barely receives enough to produce the bananas. Bananas are notorious for being sort of monocultures and if you like the whole concept of a banana republic being all about cash and sort of corporate business. So we're here to meet our farmers to have a look at what they're doing and really get a sense of the culture that they're working within. C.M. Freeze is a strong belief that a more holistic approach to growing bananas is a better approach. See the biodiversity, big mango trees, just a lot of old forests that's still here and been here for a very long time. You know it hasn't just been cleared because it doesn't need to be cleared. You've got a nice windbreak, you've got biodiversity, you've got the cows that's producing the manure, the manure going into the compost, the compost that's going down here into the plantation and then you've got the legumes and the plants that are growing in to help fix nitrogen. You've got to keep rolling, there's lots of challenges that are coming. The biggest threat at the moment which C.M. Freeze is telling me is the weather. It's becoming more erratic, there's more tornadoes than what there were before. Climate change has an enormous impact on how you farm because you need to take into consideration long periods of drought where there's no rain at all. Apart from the hurricanes we have tornadoes. If I look over the last 25 years we would have a climate event every five, six years, a hurricane or tornado or flood. Now we basically have it every year or every other year. If you have a tornado now and you have to redo your farm and next year there's a flood or a hurricane then basically you will not survive. It's hard because you are in a lot of risk that you cannot control. To me the farm is a family. You work with people that trust you, you trust them. These people care what you do and there's mutual respect for both. I'm proud of what I do. Talking to the workers they clearly mentioned that pay was a problem and that every cost had gone up and it was getting more and more difficult for them to be able to live and we actually asked them what do you think you would need and they said probably another 15, 20 percent on the wages that they were currently getting. If the UK supermarkets and other businesses that buy large volumes of bananas wanted to they would be able to do that but because they want bananas to be a hook for people coming into the store they're not prepared to increase the price. I don't believe they really care if it's 10 cents more or something and what can 10 cents do per kilo over a box of bananas. That money goes to the workers and they almost can be paid like 20, 30 percent more so the 10 cents I don't think goes to consumer minds. We can't change the banana industry but we can say look for this small group of people that we're working with we do have an opportunity to actually potentially pay more for our bananas and make sure that money goes to the people who really deserve it the most which are the workers.