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The Food Programme: Cut Price Fruit

Cut Price Fruit

14/11/2010

BBC Radio 4 - The Food Programme, Cut Price Fruit

Supermarket fruit wars - Sheila Dillon finds out if they cause pain for the producers.

Do recent supermarket price wars over bananas and discounts on pineapples damage workers at the other end of the supply chain? Sheila Dillon finds out.

Over the past few months Supermarket price wars have halved the cost of one of Britain's best loved fruits - the banana. Even though retailers say they aren't passing cuts down to growers Sheila Dillon asks, whether our appetite for cheap fruit is having an impact on workers at the other end of the supply chain. We travel to Ecuador, one of the world's leading banana exporters, to explore the reaction on a plantation. 

Elsewhere, in Costa Rica, we hear a disturbing investigation into the lives of pineapple workers who accuse the big exporters of exploitation and union breaking to provide bargain fruit. And on the brighter side of pineapple growing we meet the woman who is working tirelessly to reintroduce farming of the exotic fruit to her island in the Bahamas. 

Producer: Deiniol Buxton.

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