Our Work in the Windward Islands

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

The St. Vincent economy is heavily dependent on agriculture. Bananas alone account for upwards of 60% of the work force and 50% of merchandise exports. Such reliance on a single crop makes the economy vulnerable to external factors, such as tropical storms that wiped out substantial portions of bananas in many years.

St Lucia

St Lucia’s economy relies primarily on the sale of bananas, and the income generated from tourism, with additional input from small-scale manufacturing. The island’s banana output was heavily impacted in 2007 by the passage of Hurricane Dean. The industry is now in a terminal decline, due to reduced European Union trade preferences and competition from lower-cost Latin American banana producers.

Dominica

Agriculture, with bananas as the principal crop, is still Dominica’s economic mainstay. Banana production employs, directly or indirectly, upwards of one-third of the work force. Most crops are produced on small farms, the 9,000 owners of which are banded together in about 10 cooperatives; there are also several large farms that produce mostly bananas for export.

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Population
109,643 (2016)

GDP (PPP)
Total – $1.243 billion (2016)
Per capita – $11,291 (2016)

Total banana production
58,916 metric tonnes (2017)

St Lucia

Population
178,015 (2016)

GDP (PPP)
Total – $2.689 billion (2018)
Per capita – $15,225 (2018)

Total banana production
4,500 metric tonnes (2017)

Dominica

Population
73,543 (2016)

GDP (PPP)
Total – $688 million (2018)
Per capita – $9,726 (2018)

Total banana production
26,099 metric tonnes (2017)

Banana Link has worked closely with WINFA since the 1990s when the main cash crop of the islands was under threat from the liberalisation of the European banana import regime. A campaign to promote Caribbean bananas and the rights of small farmers to retain access to the market for their fruit featured annual presence at the giant Notting Hill Carnival (pictured). The Caribbean banana float gained considerable notoriety and allowed Banana Link to start promoting the idea of Fair Trade as part of an alternative strategy for Windward Island farmers.

Meanwhile, WINFA started to promote the idea of Fair Trade bananas from the Windward Islands with farmers, going from community to community explaining the potential benefits and setting up farmers’ committees in preparation for a UK market launch. The launch in 2000 met with success and, over the next few years, Windward Fairtrade bananas established themselves as a leader in the new UK Fairtrade banana market. By the end of the decade nearly 4000 farmers in dozens of communities across St Lucia, St Vincent and Dominica were involved in the production of bananas at a guaranteed minimum price and in investing the Fairtrade premium in a wide range of projects to benefit the farming communities involved. A real process of democratistion of the industry took place in that first decade.

However, in the next few years, a series of dramatic climatic hurricanes, a lack of vision by the companies and governments involved in this new trade, plus a growing interest by British buyers in ‘cheaper’ Fairtrade banana sources, meant that volumes declined dramatically and many farmers abandoned the increasingly climate-sensitive crop, or else abandoned farming altogether. Currently, only St Lucia is selling Fairtrade bananas, with much smaller volumes than in the past.

Over the years, WINFA’s constant quest for practical solutions to the oft-repeated calls for diversification has meant that many of the farmers who have stayed with agriculture have been able to produce other crops, build local and regional markets and recover from decades of dependence on banana monoculture.