As Asda’s move to slash the price of bananas prompts most rivals to follow suit, its pledge to be a fairer retailer warrants greater scrutiny

Shame on you Asda! The chain has just cut 17 pence per kilo off the retail price of its bananas indefinitely, according to some sources. It’s the sort of eye-popping bargain that Asda Wal-Mart likes to use to pull customers into its stores. Back in 2002, it started the infamous banana price war that unleashed a wave of human misery throughout Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean. As supermarket buyers screwed down their suppliers on price, suppliers cut wages and working conditions to recoup the loss.

As a result, most banana workers in Latin America and West Africa do not earn a living wage and work in conditions which would make you weep.

In Costa Rica, for example, secure plantation jobs have been replaced by casual work and piece-rates pitched so low that only migrant labourers, living on society’s margins, ? are desperate enough to take them on.

Young Costa Ricans, once proud to cultivate bananas, now face a mountain of problems caused by labour instability, poor wages and lack of labour rights. Be under no illusions. Asda Wal-Mart’s latest round of price-cutting will further impoverish not only them, but also their fellow workers from Colombia to Cameroon.

It’s not as if Asda isn’t aware of the effect that its price cuts have had on the plantation, but it seems to suffer from schizophrenia.

Only last month, Costa Rican banana union representatives were cordially invited to meet Asda buyers in Leeds to discuss measures to improve wages and working conditions for plantation workers.

“I really thought they’d understood the link between their price wars and our working lives, but it seems it went in one ear and straight out the other,” said one.

Asda’s main rivals have followed suit, believing they have no choice. Even if the cuts come out of ?profit margins for the time being, what happens the next time price negotiations with suppliers come round ? Tesco suppliers had to live with losing a third of their price after Asda launched its 2002 price war.

 Cynics may conclude that Asda wants to undermine Sainsbury’s brave move to make its bananas 100 per cent Fairtrade.

It makes it so much harder for any UK supermarket to create a fair and sustainable banana supply chain in the long term when key competitors are fixated on short-term gain.n

Joanna Blythman, food writer

and author of Bad Food Britain, fears for workers’ wellbeing.

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