The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts. Why are bananas so cheap to buy in the UK? In a big supermarket, a single banana costs about 15p, but presumably it has been shipped thousands of miles at some expense. Other individually sold fruit – even the stuff grown in the UK – seems to cost two or three times as much. Magdalena, by email.
Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com. When I was at school in the 50s, our geography teacher set into play a scheme where we could write (an actual letter!) to various members of our still flourishing merchant navy. Mine was to an officer aboard the TSS Camito, a vessel owned by the UK banana importer Elders & Fyffes Limited, which traded between England and the West Indies. It carried about 100 passengers, small general cargo outward bound and fruit homeward. Passenger revenue subsidised the fruit, which was fairly cheap even way back when. Fourthplinth.
It’s simply because they are used as ballast. We sell a lot of stuff to banana producing countries but buy very little from them and the ships cannot come back empty as that would be unsafe. So they fill the ship with bananas, which then have to be disposed of, hence the very low prices. When Portugal still had African colonies, they actually had propaganda campaigns to persuade people to consume more bananas. Meansardine.
Bananas are very easy to grow (compared to some crops), straightforward to harvest, have a very large yield per hectare, they can be shipped instead of flown, and it’s easy to control their ripening. They’re an inherently cheap crop. BrianO_Blivion.
To this day, governments, supermarkets, and shadowy financial institutions maintain a silent truce with the Banana Lords, keeping prices low and never questioning why. If you ever see a banana on sale for an absurdly cheap price, know this: it is not the work of supply and demand – it is the will of the Banana Lords, enforced by their Keepers and their Guardians … Hallowed be the Sundae, Merciful be the Split. GodlessHeathens.
This was going to be my answer. RumBarbar. Shipping thousands of miles is cheap. Very cheap. That may appear surprising, because sending items is relatively costly if you’re sending one item. But for one item you’re actually paying for maintaining thousands of points for collection, labelling and handling at various stages, loading and unloading many times, re-sorting those individually addressed items again and again, plus inspections and assessments for customs charges and the like. Then, delivery of that single item could be to any of millions of possible addresses. That is an expensive network to maintain with many wages to pay.
But nobody sends one banana. The costs for moving an item are shared between millions of bananas in hundreds of containers going in one load from port A to port B. Even include the cost of a ship, the machinery to maintain the environment in the containers and carrying them the last few miles. Costs per banana are tiny. Leadballoon.
