52 THE BANANA 



taking the average of the whole run of estates from Port 

 Antonio westwards to Rio Bueno, the cost per acre to 

 bring an estate into bearing would be about 10, and the 

 maintenance afterwards 7 105. The yield may be put 

 down at 175 to 180 payable bunches per acre, 



The cost of cultivation per acre differs, of course, in 

 every locality. Much higher wages can be, and are, paid 

 for banana work near a shipping port or the railway. 

 At a distance of, say, ten to twenty-five miles from either, 

 where road-transport is so heavy and costly as to render 

 it impossible to ship fruit except for a few months in the 

 year, wages are, and must be, lower. 



I have been favoured by a banana planter with the 

 following abstract of accounts for one year. It refers to 

 an estate of 200 acres in an irrigated district on the south 

 side of Jamaica. 



Total Expenditure . . . 2038 14?. 4jd. 



Bunches Eights Sevens Sixes Total cut Payable 

 24,356 16,016 12,778 4468 57,618 43,827 



Average of payables out of total cut 76 per cent. 



RECEIPTS 



s. d. 



Bananas 3589 13 5 



Suckers 35 15 5 



Miscellaneous 10 1 10| 



Total 3635 10 8 



The following figures derived from a banana plantation 

 situated in a non-irrigated district on the north side will 

 be useful by way of comparison. The soil is loose and 

 gravelly without clay, rain 150 in. Thirty-one acres were 

 planted to produce a crop the following year. There were 

 besides 135 acres yielding fruit, of which fifty acres were 

 plants, and eighty-five ratoons. 



Total Expenditure .... 1250 



