But he admits some problems. Substandard storage and transport make quality inconsistent. Absence of irrigation suppresses yield much of the year. And hurricanes make supply forecasts unreliable. In the Windward Islands, the southern half of the eastern Caribbean chain, about a third of the labor force works in bananas, providing 35 percent of export earnings.
Bananas are also key to larger Caribbean countries, such as Jamaica.
There, it has long been protected and now accounts for almost a tenth of the EU's banana imports. A scheme established in 1993 gives preference in licensing to those who import bananas from former colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and the Pacific, and imposes tariffs on bananas from elsewhere. This is seen by many in the Caribbean as an obligation to former colonies populated by descendants of Africans the Europeans enslaved. But it has stymied growth in what had been a rapidly growing market. Such fine points seem lost in the Caribbean.