Bananas (1)

For this blog, I will be writing about a banana I ate yesterday because the sticker on it said it came from Ecuador and I thought it would be fun to track. Although I can not tell exactly where it came from, I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from Guayaquil, which is a very hot and humid place that has massive banana, cacao, plantain, and rice fields (I see them every time I go to the airport in Guayaquil). On Realtor.com, I found that an acre in Guayaquil costs around $200,000 (9). When it comes to industrial farming, roughly 2,000 banana plants can be grown on an acre (4), which translates to a cost of $100 per banana plant. I’ll tack on an additional $100 per plant per year for miscellaneous things such as insecticides, irrigation, fertilizer, and seed acquisition. The cost of unskilled labor in Ecuador ranges from $20-$25 per day, and to man a single acre this dense I’ll say takes 4 people, which makes the cost of labor $43,680 for the full year (assuming the workers got trained and are getting paid $30 a day). For my calculations, I will assume that only one head of bananas gets produced per plant per year (1) and that each head of bananas has 240 bananas (3). According to these numbers, 480,000 bananas are made in a year on a single acre. If I only factor in the cost of growing and maintaining (since I don’t know how or when Dole bought the property), each banana comes out to a little under $0.10 cents to produce. 

To transport the bananas overseas, they are packaged into massive 40 ft metal containers. Each container costs about $4000 (commercially) (10), and the ships coming out of Ecuador can haul 1,000 of these containers (6), each of which can hold a little under 100,000 bananas (12). Since Dole owns its own fleet, I will assume that they can get the cost of transporting each container from Guayaquil to Wilmington, Delaware (5) down to $3000.

Once the bananas touch base in Delaware, I will make the assumption that they will immediately be sorted and delivered to the customer warehouses, in this case Walmart. From there, Dole will deliver the bananas to the nearest Walmart distribution center located in Smyrna, Delaware. From Smyrna, the bananas would then probably get shipped directly over to Fishkill, New York. “As of May 2024, the average spot rate for a refrigerated truck was $2.42 per mile” (7), meaning that transporting the bananas from Wilmington to Smyrna would cost $90.02. If we add the average labor rate for the driver of $0.64 per mile, then it would cost a total of $113.83 to get one container’s worth of bananas over to Smyrna (11). Assuming the same rate, the cost to get the truck from Smyrna to Fishkill would cost $679.32. The total cost to get one banana from Guayaquil to Fishkill would then come out to roughly $0.04. Assuming Walmart only paid $4000 for the whole container of 100,000 bananas and that Sam’s Club paid three minimum wage employees to unload the delivery truck in an hour, the cost of acquiring each banana comes out to $0.04, bringing the cost of putting a single banana on the shelf at Sam’s Club to $0.08. 

The banana’s journey ended when I bought it as part of a bunch at Sam’s Club for ~$2 (including tax) earlier in the week. To get it home, I had to drive 15 minutes (~6 miles). “According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the average cost per mile of driving a car is $0.58” (8), which means that the roundtrip costs me around $6.96 in total. If I were to add the cost of the Sam’s Club membership per day, my new total would come out to $7.10. Given that I bought 12 items, the cost of me moving to get the bananas was $0.59. In total, I personally spent $2.59 to pick up 7 bananas, meaning that the one banana I ate cost me ~$0.37. 

In conclusion, the banana that I ate traveled 3,000 miles to reach me and cost a collective $0.55 to consume between Dole, Sam’s Club, and myself. 

Works Cited

1. “Appendices.” Setting up and Running a School Garden, http://www.fao.org/4/a0218e/A0218E14.htm#:~:text=Bananas%20are%20grown%20and%20harvested,to%20fruit%20in%20warm%20weather. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

2. “Banana Roadshow 2022: New Flavors and Textures of Ecuadorian Bananas.” FruitToday, 7 Sept. 2022, fruittoday.com/en/banana-roadshow-2022-new-flavors-and-textures-of-ecuadorian-bananas/. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

3. “Bananas: From the Bunch to Your Breakfast.” Rainforest Alliance, 2 Nov. 2021, www.rainforest-alliance.org/resource-item/bananas-from-bunch-to-breakfast/#:~:text=As%20the%20bud%20unfolds%2C%20it,produce%20up%20to%20240%20bananas. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

4. Bohol, Eulogia. “Banana Planting Distances and Support Systems.” Wikifarmer, 18 July 2023, wikifarmer.com/banana-planting-distances-and-support-systems/. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

5. “Dole Food Company Expands to Second Weekly Service at Port Wilmington: Port Wilmington.” Port Wilmington | Full-Service, Deep Water Port and Marine Terminal., 18 Jan. 2024, portwilmington.com/dole-food-company-expands-to-second-weekly-service-at-port-wilmington/#:~:text=WILMINGTON%2C%20Delaware%20(January%2018%2C,Colombia%2C%20Honduras%2C%20and%20Guatemala. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

6. Dole Plc – Our Business – Our Business Units – Dole Fresh Fruit, http://www.doleplc.com/our-business/our-business-units/dole-fresh-fruit/default.aspx. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

7. “A Guide to Freight Trucking Rates in 2024.” Uber Freight, 29 May 2024, www.uberfreight.com/blog/freight-trucking-rates-guide/#:~:text=Average%20reefer%20trucking%20rate&text=Maintaining%20a%20set%20temperature%20means,mile%20as%20a%20contract%20rate. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

8. “How Much Your Car Is Costing You per Mile.” Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo!, finance.yahoo.com/news/much-car-costing-per-mile-110042500.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHVa-ipmq_KooPk5aG_YN_TwliRJ-G0-hjMZmSGFt36hENOVks09aaNVtnAbINCSLx0C832fn-vqzcG0ajFSxycxq7Cdetbr1wMdlnEuRcwt34R-G0nmEuna1xLs3QpHf5TZJW_xiFHF88EQ7JVHtT0ZeY_wlY4axZDtYAQ8ELB1. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

9. Property for Sale in Ecuador – Realtor.Com, http://www.realtor.com/international/ec/. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

10. “Ship a Container to Ecuador.” BR LOGISTICS USA Shipping Imports Exports, http://www.brlogistics.net/us/ship-a-container/to-ecuador/. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.

11. “Truck Driver Pay per Mile in 2024 at Werner Enterprises.” Werner Enterprises, 2 Aug. 2024, www.werner.com/blog/truck-drivers/pay-per-mile/#:~:text=The%20average%20pay%20for%20dedicated,the%20most%20experienced%20team%20member. Accessed 30 Sep.   2024.

12. “What You Can Fit inside a Shipping Container.” ContainerCo, 21 July 2022, http://www.containerco.co.nz/shipping-containers-what-can-you-fit/#:~:text=So%20if%20you%20ever%20need,the%20items%20to%20protect%20them. Accessed 30 Sep. 2024.