The Port Strike and the Banana

Just one port–Wilmington, Delaware-welcomes 27% of our country’s banana imports.

With Wilmington, and other East and Gulf Coast ports on strike, so much more than my yogurt and banana breakfast will be affected.

A Banana’s Travels

Our story starts though with unusually tasty bananas. Arriving in New Jersey in 1870, the Gros Michel didn’t ripen too quickly or bruise too easily. We could have found it at Wall Street’s Banana Docks:

You and I, though, were not destined to enjoy them. By 1960 very few Gros Michel remained because of a fungal disease that had been spreading for 40 years. A second rate rather bland banana that needed pesticides and ethylene ripening replaced it. Called the Cavendish, it survived the fungus.

As a result, today, Cavendish bananas are probably waiting to enter Wilmington. Although they should have a ripeness score of #1, the strike could plunge it to a 7:

Typically grown, harvested, and packed in Costa Rica by Dole, the bananas that arrive at the port of Wilmington then travel to a ripening facility in the Bronx, NY. There, they get a temperature check (56 degrees) and the ethylene gas that ripens them. The goal is a ripeness score of 2.5 to 4 with a color that is 75 percent yellow and 25 percent green.

Do take a look at the land, labor, and capital that ripen our bananas:

Now though, this supply chain’s final links might have no bananas.

Our Bottom Line: Port Strike Impact

One of many supply chains that is broken, the banana tells a much bigger story. For so many other commodities, the port strike hit will be just as devastating. We can worry about soon-to-spoil food like cod from Canada and shrimp from Thailand. In addition, lasting longer but missed more then shrimp, alcohol is on some of the boats. And, we could also be talking about Gulf oil, European cars and auto parts., and Asian electronics.

But perhaps we can just remember that sadly, we might be talking about #7 bananas on the ripeness scale.

My sources and more: Seeing that bananas felt the port strike impact, I returned to our econlife look at them. From there, while The Hill told us much more, I thank azcentral for the best list of strike-affected commodities. Then, excellent for banana history and production, this NY Times Op-Ed from Dan Koeppel, this Freakonomics post and this New Yorker article and video provided all you would probably want to know about banana economics.

Also please note that today I’ve included parts of previous econlife posts.