The reigning meager retail pricing in Europe of export bananas from Latin America is opening a pandora’s box. This is after six countries from the region decried the price against costly export certifications.
The Banana Cluster of Ecuador on March 17, 2025 specifically reprimanded the Kaufland chain for retailing imports in Germany at 0.88 euro ($0.96) a kg.
Producers further demanded fair prices that honor production and certification costs from Europe-based discount retail chains.
Also rallying around the call are the banana guilds of Peru, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Colombia.
Colombia and Costa Rica in particular had by March 18 seen a slight decline in their respective general export prices. Colombia registered a 1% weekly decrement while Costa Rica recorded around 2% depreciation in banana export pricing. Exporters from the two countries attribute the fall to diverse market factors and inflation.
Some lucky nations in the sextet such as Guatemala meanwhile retain stable general export prices at 0.89 euro ($0.97) a kg.
While the price stability in Guatemala is not markedly different from Kaufland’s, it however indicates low pricing as only temporary.
Certified and Organic
The Latin American producers want to see prices that reflect certification costs or rates representative of growing organic bananas.
For certification, farmers either pay per-box surcharges or resort to Fairtrade supply chains to reduce certification costs.
Growing organic bananas on the other hand spikes labor costs, no wonder their share in the worldwide banana trade remains 1%.
But organic bananas pay off eventually for their prices are generally 20 to 50% above those of regular bananas.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), most of the countries that sell organic bananas are from Latin America. In 2013, the Dominican Republic led acreage at 12,000 hectares (ha) while Peru followed with 11,500 ha.
With such production demands and import regulations, it is only natural that export bananas from Latin America need bring “decent wages.” To learn more, below is the bigger picture of this major regional agricultural sector.
Statistics on Export Bananas from Latin America
While a substantial share of bananas from Latin America enjoys home consumption (55 kg per capita, 2018), most are for export. In the 2016-18 period, the region together with the Caribbean consistently represented 75-80% of the world’s banana exports, according to FAO.
How much is the production of bananas versus exports in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Bananas are the most aggressively farmed and exported fruit of the region. Production averages 30 million tonnes annually, as of 2018, and almost half or 13 million tonnes undergoes export. While production represents a quarter of the world’s total, exports reach more than three-quarters of the global banana trade. Only avocado, whose world production share for Latin America in 2018 was 73% and the export share 85%, surpasses regional banana exports.
Which regional countries lead in banana export value?
Four of the top 10 banana-exporting nations in 2023 were from Latin America. These included Ecuador at the first position, with exports worth $3.8 billion or 26.3% global share. Costa Rica came third after the Philippines at $1.9 billion while Guatemala at $1.15 billion finished third. Colombia, at $915.2 million, culminated the top 6.