Harvesting Bananas,
Costa Rica, Central America
As we look at this luxuriant
plantation, typical of Central America, we get the feeling of actually
breathing the hot and humid atmosphere of the tropical jungle. We are about ten
degrees north of the Equator, and a few miles inland from the Caribbean Coast,
but only a few feet above sea level. Here are raised enormous quantities of
bananas on some of the greatest fruit farms in the world.
The fruit matures
in from three to four months after blossoms fall. It must be cut while green.
If allowed to ripen on the plant it will lose entirely its delicious flovor and
and become insipid. As it ripens, it sucks strength from the great stem around
which the banana clusters are attached.
From the plantation
the bunches are transported by pack animals and tram cars to the railway for
shipment to the coast. The little “banana railroad” that we see in the distance
is owned by the United Fruit Company whose great refrigerator steamers carry
vast quantities of this fruit. In these steamers a temperature of about 48
degrees Fahrenheit must be maintained so that the fruit will not ripen too
quickly. From its main offices in the United States the Fruit Company sends
definite loading orders by radio to its central offices in the tropics in
advance of the arrival of the steamship.
The first
importation of bananas into th United States was said to have occurred in
1804nwhen thirty bunches were brought from Cuba to New York. The industry did
not develop in a large way until in 1899. Today the people of the United States
and Canada alone consume 50,000,000 bunches of bananas in a year.
Copyright by Keystone
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