So this guy walks into a bar with a banana in one hand and a pineapple in the other…
By Mike Danna
Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation Public Relations Director
If you refer to a banana plant as a tree Carlos Gamboa will point his razor sharp machete at you and tell you not to call it that.
At the Dole Banana Plantation today outside La Fortuna the class learned everything there is to know about the banana. It really is the perfect food.
For example a banana is an herb and not a tree.
“This plant is 90 percent water,” Gamboa said, taking his machete and splitting a plant vertically from top to bottom as Jeremy Raley, who was holding it upright, cautiously watched. “Trees are made of wood. If this was wood, could you do this?”
Indeed.
The plantation operates 200 hectares, or about 500 acres, in some of the lushest conditions in the world. And to provide the U.S. with half the bananas grown at his plantation, Gamboa said his farm has to have both quality and quantity.
The farm’s banana plants number 1,700 to the hectare. That’s 340,000 “herbs” farmwide. Each plant produces just one bunch and after it’s harvested the tree (sorry) is cut down to make way for a new plant. The bunches average about 75 pounds each and each bunch, as it’s maturing, is covered in blue plastic. Katie Ramagos even climbed a ladder during the tour to demonstrate how the process works.
And just like a baby, it takes nine months from fertilization to harvest. Gamboa’s T-shirt featured a baby coming out of a banana peel.
Bananas have been grown in Costa Rica commercially since 1876. Today the Dole plantation is the leader in quality banana production. And while 50 percent of the plant’s Costa Rican crop is bound for the U.S., Americans are not the leading consumers of bananas. It’s Sweden, according to Gamboa, which consumes 42 pounds of bananas per person per year. That’ a lot of herbs.
Our afternoon stop can only be described as a Rodney Dangerfield act inside a farm wagon, rather than a Vegas nightclub.
Michael (forgive me, I didn’t get his last name), the production manager of the Finca Corsicana organic pineapple farm was something out of a Cohen Brothers movie. The guy had the class screaming with laughter as he joked about the sweetness of his pineapples, all the while testing our knowledge of pineapple production.
But the serious side of Finca Corsicana, a Texas-based company, is that 70 percent of its production is organic, making it one of the largest producers of organic pineapples in the world. There’s about a 75 percent chance that if you buy a pineapple in Whole Foods it came from Finca Corsicana plantation.
During our wagon tour of the farm we got to taste what had to be the freshest, sweetest pineapple in the world. Seriously. There’s nothing better than fresh from the field.
The pineapple tour ended with each of us being served a “pina colada” in a pineapple cup. You had to be there to understand just how amazing this drink tasted.
Jim shot lots of great photos of both events today and you can check them out on the site. Tomorrow will be a day of rest for us as we return to San Jose for our final night in country. Along the way we’ll stop in a town to witness Costa Ricans going to the polls to elect a new president. It’s a big deal here and our timing couldn’t be better.
Until next time…