Bananas are almost always one of the cheapest fruits to buy at the grocery store. Bananas are tasty, nutritious, and can be considered a bargain compared to other fruits such as apples. The United States consumes approximately 3 million tons of bananas each year and produces little of it. Most of the bananas we consume are imported and delivered from thousands of miles away in places like Guatemala and Honduras (which are known as the banana republics) to be sold at your nearest supermarket for about 50 cents. To explain why this is the case, we need to start from when bananas became popular.

The banana was introduced to most Americans for the first time at the 1876 World's Fair in Philadelphia. This exotic, tropical fruit caused a growing demand amongst the population so large that by 1885, the Boston Fruit Company purchased land in Central America to grow bananas. The company offered the Latin American governments outside money and benefits such as employment making it difficult to refuse. The Boston Fruit Company then merged into the United Fruit Company in 1899 and the United Fruit Company virtually held a monopoly in some regions of Central America. In 1951, when Jacobo Árbenz, the newly-elected president of Guatemala wanted to collect fair taxes from the United Fruit Company and guarantee fair wages for its workers, but they did not accept these terms. Since CIA director, Allen Dulles, and Secretary of State, John Foster, had close ties to United Fruit, they were able to persuade President Dwight Eisenhower to agree on a secret coup de'tat to overthrow Árbenz. The secret mission succeeded and in Árbenz's place, Castillo Armas agreed to let United Fruit (later Chiquita in 1984) maintain control. This allows for bananas to be sold at the market by the price it is today. Before buying bananas the next time you are at the supermarket, think about what kind of companies you are supporting.