The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-06-11

10 four thousand lunches per acre. In
prolonged it is expected that a banana
tree will yield five lunches per year.
But take the smaller figure. The per
feet bunch of bananas the nine hand
bunch. now brings fifty cents at the
wharf, so that figuring the modest
yield of two thousand punches to the
acre the revenue is a thousand dollars
a year per acre. The item of labor is
the best part of it. Wages are from
five English shillings per week up to
fifty cents per day. this latter being
considered high. They will figure you
cost of production all the way from six
to twelve cents per bunch and the
beauty of the whole scheme is that in
eleven months from the time you lay
the jungle and plant your first crop
you will begin to cut your fruit and one
planting lasts from twenty to forty
years.
There is the banana scheme as it ap-
pears on paper and there are plenty of
successful planters in the island to
whom you can refer for veriication.
The banana plant is not a tree, it is
a perennial, growing from a bulb, like
a giant tulip. When the stalk bears its
fruit, it dies like the blackberry. This
is cut away and another shoot is allow
ed to bear. These shoots come UP
from the bulbs and grow to a height of
fifteen or twenty feet. The leaf is
something like Indian corr only cross
ribbed and growing to a great length
giving the plant the appearance of a
palm. The suckers are cut back at
the roots and only three to five are al
lowed to live, according to the strength
of the soil and the amount of rainfall,
for the banana is a water plant and
thrives best where the precipitation Is
greatest as in Honduras where in the
course of a year the rainfall is over a
hundred inches.
But there is another side to this
picture. There always is. In the first
place no northern man can stand the
climate, and even if he can. he cannot
work under the tropic sun. Another
thing and paralelling the last state
ment, nobody else will work. Labor is
cheap and the quality cheaper. Again.
one must have a care in selecting ban
n land not only for its quality but for
accessibility to the railroad or wharf.
Enterprising promoters have sold
thousands of acres OF the richest kind
of banana land to northern suckers.
land that for growing purposes could
not be surpassed, but unfortunately
for the investors was lying back Of
strips owned by rival fruit companies
and no right-of-way obtainable. In
Jamaica, land can be bought for a song
and the reason is hat it costs more
them to the wharf. Again the dubious
nature of the plant does not admit of
its roofing deeply, and thousands and
thousands of acres have been destroy
ed by hurricanes after all the labor OF
bringing them TO bear. Another fly in
the ointment is the banana disease
which has made its appearance lately
in Costa Rico, and the United Fruit
Company have lost thousands of plants
on that account. Still another draw
back is the enormous waste. We per
haps never stop to think that we buy
more bananas in the summer time
when we see a lucious bunch hanging
in front of a fruit store, but the trOpi-
cal planter knows this and the United
Fruit Company also know it. They
buy on contract, from the planter, taxi
ing so many punches per year, but
they take more in the summer than in
the winter. The only party to the
whole transaction who knows no differ
ence is the banana plant. 1t goes on
cheerfully bearing fruit at about the
same ratio, year after year, in season
and out. The loss is enormous.
| believe if we had a problem of that
sort we would figure out some way to
take care of the waste, but as yet little