CHAPTER XVII 

 WINE, WHISKY, AND ALCOHOL FROM BANANAS 



Loss on Small Bunches. In countries that produce 

 bananas for export there is a very considerable number of 

 bunches that are too small or are otherwise commercially 

 unfit for export. In all the exporting countries put 

 together there are probably as many as eight million 

 bunches that annually fail to come up to the high standard 

 rightly insisted upon by the shippers. In Jamaica alone, 

 it has been calculated that over three million bunches are 

 produced annually which cannot be profitably exported.* 



* Note, for instance, what the Secretary of the Jamaica Agricultural 

 Society says below (Journ., x. 164, 1906) : " It is instructive to visit one 

 of the buying depots for bananas where the sellers are mostly small culti- 

 vators. All through the dfcy and night long lines of carts and drays, donkeys, 

 and mules arrive loaded with bananas, and carts holding up to thirty 

 bunches, the drays up to forty, the donkeys carrying four and the mules 

 six, generally. What is peculiarly depressing is the tremendous amount 

 of waste that occurs. The number of rejections shows clearly enough 

 how much instruction is needed by the small cultivators not only in the 

 growing of bananas, and in the timing of thejn for the season, but of the 

 cutting of the right grades. Just at this time (end of March), when full 

 three-quarter fruit is wanted for the United States, we noticed a whole 

 cart-load rejected, all for being too thin. The fruit wanted three weeks 

 to fill. Another cart-load had ten stems out of twenty-five rejected, 

 another seven out of thirty, and so on. None of these rejections were for 

 bruises, all for being too thin fruit, and yet these cultivators have been 

 cutting fruit every season for years. In many cases the cause of thin 

 fruit, no doubt, is greed the same spirit that actuates men to offer unfit 

 oranges, half -cured coffee and cocoa, and so on bust at least in an equal 

 number of cases it is the want of knowledge, and here we find men coming 

 fifteen to thirty miles hauling fruit for which they get nothing, and over 

 and above have had the wear-and-tear of their beasts and cart, and their 

 time is lost, when by waiting two weeks their fruit would have been cheer- 



127 



