Product Description

In the Caribbean Windward Islands, one in three jobs and half of export earnings depend on bananas. But from the end of 2005, the European Union will give up the last non-tariff measures designed to protect this trade. Looming over the islanders are unemployment, poverty, further emigration, and the almost inevitable switch to growing illegal drugs. Banana Wars tells how the US government, answering the grievances of a single American corporation, forced the World Trade Organization to nullify a European Community commitment to protect small Caribbean banana growers. The international trading system lacks the flexibility needed to give states like the Windward Islands the protection that they need to survive, while powerful supermarket chains insist on ever-lower prices, to the short-term benefit of consumers but the serious detriment of growers. This book calls for new EU arrangements to help the Caribbean banana industry beyond 2005 and for the WTO to give greater consideration to the needs of very small states with vulnerable economies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #967515 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
'Gordon Myers' expertise on the banana issue is well known. However his account of the Caribbean banana farmers' continuing struggle to survive eloquently reveals both his commitment and his concern. Current debates about world trade and unfettered liberalisation should be informed by the history of how livelihoods in the Caribbean have been destroyed, by decisions taken thousands of miles away in the US, in the EU and at the WTO. I commend The Banana Wars to all those who subscribe to the view that vulnerable banana producers need protection. The alternative is massive rural unemployment and a fall in national income levels. Unrealistic calls for diversification and restructuring should take into account the specific difficulties faced by traditional banana farmers in the Caribbean. With the prospect of enlargement of the European Union and the imminent inclusion of ten new member states, we have to protect the markets of Europe's traditional banana suppliers.' - Glenys Kinnock MEP 'Gordon Myers has written a thoroughly researched and very readable book, tracing the history of the banana as a commercial crop and placing it in the socio and political context of the Caribbean and Latin America. Its publication is both timely and relevant in the face of the global trade negotiations now in progress, and should be compulsory reading for all those in the Third World now engaged in these negotiations.' - Sir John Compton, Prime Minister of St Lucia 1982-1996

About the Author
Gordon Myers is a former senior British civil servant who, since 1993, has worked with the Caribbean Banana Exporters Association (CBEA) in trying to defend the interests of Caribbean banana growers who depend on the European market.