• Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 months ago

      Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.

      • jimbo@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Buying bananas to help people in developing countries is like shopping at Walmart to help the employees. The vast majority of that money isn’t going to them.

        This is true, but at the end of the day, that’s where those people get the money they need to survive. Refusing to buy a banana isn’t going to magic them up another industry.

        • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          10 months ago

          Sure, but don’t pretend it’s for the benefit of the people working in unsafe conditions for extreme poverty wages to provide the developed world with cheap bananas.

          An individual not buying bananas isn’t going to change the industry, and neither is telling people you have to buy bananas to save the poor banana farm workers.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Because bananas are grown in third world countries where many mega corps are controlling many aspects of the food growing and trading.

      While apple farmers, you can litterally go pick them yourself by the price set by the farmer.

      This is more nuanced than that, but that’s the gist.

    • calzone_gigante@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Buying from shitty companies that exploit a country won’t help people on that country.

      Those companies do not inject money on the cities they enter. They bribe politicians for advantages, destroy the natural resources, and go as close to slave work as they can while paying no taxes.

    • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      The point is in no way is a cheap banana in new York, in the winter, a proper reflection of the “fair cost it should be” for the farmer who worked to make it

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Which tells you how large of an impact they had if their legacy is still with us.

      Are the apple farmers living and working in a third world country? Getting as little as possible?

    • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
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      10 months ago

      Yeah pretty sure it’s mostly racism that makes people assume all banana producing countries are run by rich white men, also the assumption that people in those countries don’t want to engage in trade like everyone else does.

      Reality is bananas are currently cheap because they grow well and transport easily, also because cargo is very cheap thanks to giant shipping containers. The same reason goods made in the rest of the world are available to people in banana farms - the fact no one has any reason to doubt you’re from a banana producing country is testament to the benefit two way trade has made us all. Your phone is probably newer than mine, you can use it to look up all the same information and entertainment as me living in one of the most colonialist countries - things have changed so much for the better and pretending it hasn’t is a major flaw in a lot of people’s thinking at the moment.

      And of course that doesn’t change history but moving forward is far more important than whatever it is the people angry at bananas want us to worry about.