Harriet Lamb visits banana farmers in the Windward Islands

By Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fairtrade Foundation

No-one could avoid smirking when I said I was going to the sunny Caribbean island of St Lucia on work. Yeah, yeah….. But what can a girl do, when some of our most important producer partners happen to be the banana farmers of the Windward Islands which includes St Lucia as well as St Vincent and Dominica.

It’s a tough assignment. But, honest guv, while I have to admit the sun is a joy and the scenery utterly beautiful, in fact there is nothing more inspirational than spending time with these farmers.

They have had the trade book thrown at them, starting with the banana wars in which the USA took the EU to the cleaners and forced them to reduce protection for the Caribbean bananas. That they survived this far, is, say the farmers over and over again, thanks to Fairtrade.

Until recently, they were humming. Farmers were producing great quality bananas, they were well organised and taking more and more of the business under their control including exporting, and they were investing significant sums of Fairtrade premium into their communities.

And then they have been rocked by natural disasters – Hurricane Dean, followed by drought, followed by Hurricane Tomas and now they are battling the global scourge of the banana industry, the disease called black sigatoka.

Again and again, they have bounced back, thanks to their resilience and organisation. As Julius Pollius, Chair of the Windward Islands National Farmers Association (WINFA) said: ‘The beauty of it was how the farmers have responded – we are ready to move forward’.

On St Vincent, I go with the other leader of the farmers, Renwick Rose (who recently won the Guardian International Development Achievement Award) to visit the Prime Minister, Ralph Gonsalves. He gives me a bear-hug and invites me to join the Cabinet for lunch. They have been meeting all day and just finished discussing the upcoming Diamond Jubilee visit of Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex.

The PM gives me a glass of sorrel juice to try – a red, fruity drink that wonderfully refreshing – and I enjoy some calaloo soup which is green and spinach-like. The Prime Minister leans back and relaxedly tells the story of how the bananas ever came to the islands: after the war, the British were short of foreign exchange and didn’t want to spend on ‘dollar bananas’ from Central America. So they encouraged the Windward Islands (whose sugar industry was going down as subsidies encouraged beet sugar growing in Europe) to get into bananas because the pound was still their currency. In fact, still today, it’s a shock to find the Queen’s youthful face on their notes and coins.

In St Vincent, Ancelema Rose, one of WINFA’s leading lights, has set up a women’s group. The idea is to bring together people from all stages of the chain from women farmers; to someone who makes chutneys and jams and another who makes very strong apple and cherry wines to a hotel owner. There’s a good debate about to get printing and packaging done on the island, and about whether tea-tree oil would be good to combat black sigatoka.

Finally, the women resolve to get on and take matters into their own hands, and see what they can do to halt the banana disease.

More of Harriet’s blogs from the Windward Islands to follow soon