Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach
Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs: How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach

Bananas are the fifth most widely traded farm product. While the results of monopolization in the banana business, such as environmental contamination and the exploitation of labor, are frequently criticized, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs demonstrates that the industry is not globally unifor...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Southgate, Douglas (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Philadelphia, Pa. University of Pennsylvania Press [2016]
Subjects:
Geschichte 1900-2016
Banana trade > Ecuador
Bananenhandel
Südamerika
Kolumbien
Ecuador
Online Access:DE-1043
DE-1046
DE-858
DE-898
DE-859
DE-860
DE-473
DE-739
Volltext
Summary:Bananas are the fifth most widely traded farm product. While the results of monopolization in the banana business, such as environmental contamination and the exploitation of labor, are frequently criticized, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs demonstrates that the industry is not globally uniform, nor uniformly rotten. Douglas Southgate and Lois Roberts challenge the perception that multinational corporations face no significant competitors in the banana business and argue that Ecuador and Colombia are important sources of competition. Focusing on Ecuador, the world's leading exporter of bananas since the early 1950s, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs highlights the factors that led to the development of independent fruit industries, including environmental conditions, governmental policies, and, most significantly, entrepreneurship on the part of local growers and exporters.Although multinational firms headquartered in the United States have been active in the country, Ecuador has never been a banana republic, dominated economically and politically by a foreign corporation. Instead, Southgate and Roberts show that a competitive market for tropical fruit exists in and around Guayaquil, a port city dedicated to international commerce for centuries. Moreover, that market has consistently rewarded productive entrepreneurship. Drawing on interviews and archival research, Southgate and Roberts investigate leading exporters' and growers' origins, which are more humble than privileged, as well as their paths to success in the banana business. Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs shows that international marketing by Guayaquil-based merchants has been aggressive and innovative. As a result, Ecuador's tropical fruit sector has expanded more than it would have done had multinational corporate dominance never been challenged
Item Description:Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed May 30, 2016)
Physical Description:1 online resource 3 illus
ISBN:9780812292701
DOI:10.9783/9780812292701

There is no print copy available.

Interlibrary loan Place Request Caution: Not in THWS collection! Get full text

Similar Items