Who we are & why bananas?

Banana Link is a small and dynamic not-for-profit co-operative, founded in 1996 that campaigns for a fair and sustainable banana trade. We work in close partnership with Latin American banana workers trade unions, small Caribbean farmers and civil society organizations in Europe and the U.S.

Most of the bananas eaten in Britain come from Latin America and West Africa, where production is characterised by large-scale plantations, and the Caribbean where most bananas are grown on small family farms.

Bananas are symbolic of the wide range of injustices present in international trade today. These include:

• unacceptable working and living conditions for many of those who grow and harvest
the bananas;
• suppression of independent trade unions;
• environmental devastation caused by toxic chemicals and intensive farming;
• the disproportionate economic and political power of the handful of multinational corporations which supply bananas to the North;
• the increasing buyer power of European and North American supermarkets (bananas are the single biggest profit making items sold in  British supermarket)

Bananas also link these issues to the international trade rules that increasingly shape our lives. 

Bananas have been subject to one of the most controversial trade disputes in the World Trade Organisation that pitted Europe against the United States and some Latin American countries.

Objectives

Banana Link works for a socially just, environmentally sound and economically viable banana industry.  We aim to contribute to the alleviation of poverty in the major banana exporting regions of the world and create a sustainable banana economy by:

• campaigning and lobbying, nationally and internationally, for decent living and working conditions for banana workers and to prevent environmental degradation;
• building and strengthening alliances with small farmers' organisations in the Caribbean and banana workers' trade unions in Latin America and a range of civil society organisations in Europe and North America;
• providing educational services and a specialised research and information service on the international banana trade
• promoting sustainable policies including Fairtrade labeled bananas to international organisations such as the EU and WTO, companies and retailers.

For further information about our agenda for 2006 and beyond please read the Participants Declaration issued at the second International Banana Conference.