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 criticized in a number of books and articles, 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 Colombia and especially Ecuador are important sources of competition.

 

Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs focuses on the role played by local growers and exporters in Ecuador, which has been the world's leading banana exporter for more than sixty years without ever being dominated by foreign corporations.

 

 

"Based on sound historical and contemporary assessment, Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs refreshingly corrects conventional wisdom about the banana industry."—Joachim von Braun, University of Bonn

 

"Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs is an entertaining and insightful work providing a synthetic, alternative history of the banana industry."—Paul Sabin, Yale University

 

More on CLAS affiliate Doug Southgate

 

Douglas Southgate specializes in the study of natural resource issues in Latin American. He has written numerous books, chapters and journal articles on public policies contributing to tropical deforestation, hydrocarbon development, the economics of watershed management, and related topics. Professor Southgate’s latest book, coauthored by historian Lois Roberts and titled Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs – How One Banana-Exporting Country Achieved Worldwide Reach, will be published in early 2016 by the University of Pennsylvania Press. A fluent Spanish speaker, he has worked in 15 Latin American, Caribbean, and African nations. Having directed Ohio State’s Latin American Studies Program and served on the Tropical Ecosystems Directorate of the U.S. Man and Biosphere Program, Professor Southgate has been the associate director of the Subsurface Energy Resource Center (SERC) since its creation by the university in September 2011 in response to accelerated oil and gas development in Ohio.

 

For a full description, table of contents and more visit the University of Pennslyvania Press Website.