Tracking Bananas?
Ryan Foley, one of my DPhil students who is also a former OiM student, introduced me to this website, created by Dole, where you can track the specific banana you bought by entering a unique code on your banana’s label. See: Dole Earth website
It is an interactive site with videos showing the farms and farmers where Dole’s bananas and pineapples are grown.
The above images show the farm tour site where you can move around the farm and zoom into people while using your mouse.
One wonders whether this site came about as the result of Dole being the focus on one of the first “follow-the-thing” documentaries by Amos Gitai called Ananas (Pineapple) from 1986. This film cleverly juxtaposes Dole’s CEOs enjoying the high life in Hawaii with the exploitation of workers on pineapple farms in both Hawaii and the Philippines. See http://www.amosgitai.com/html/film.asp?docid=41&
