Ethics Vs Bananas

The Brazilian acai berry has been a food staple for low income families for years and a cultural symbol for generations. This berry is vital in Brazil, where it is farmed and, until recently had a relatively small market. However, after an Oprah interview the demand for acai has become an international affair. The rising demand has created a free market; however the once inexpensive food staple has become too expensive for the low income families. This report will analyse the current markets advantages and disadvantages, followed by two possible government intervention models. The examined interventions will be export tariff and price ceiling.

One example of this is how powdered milk from America, (which gets subsidized by the American government) destroyed the Jamaican fresh milk industry. This caused many Jamaican farmers to go out of business, and they ended up having to slaughter their cows and then the farmers had to pour out their milk. The market for Jamaican chicken was undercut by the United States, when the US started bringing a lot of low-grade chicken parts into Jamaica. While there are numerous restrictions on foods and goods imported into the US, there are often times no restrictions on food and goods exported to developing countries. Agreements such as NAFTA have the consequence of enforcing this inequity under the guise of "free trade." Subsidized Idaho potatoes have bankrupted Jamaican potato farmers, McDonald's refuses to buy local meat, and sweet Jamaican onions are underpriced by American onions that are sold at a loss. One of the one remaining domestic exports in Jamaica is bananas, however the industry is currently being threatened by wage cuts and stagnation, and the working conditions in the industry are comparable to

The country has itself been fighting an avian flu outbreak, culling 34 million birds so far this year” (The New York Times). The types of decisions might managers have made for him/her due to the market structure characteristics, the manager might have to decide how to make a profit due to the many sellers selling identical profits. For example, in the book it said “The same crops grown by different farmers are largely interchangeable. According to the United States Department of Agriculture monthly reports, in 2015, U.S. corn farmers received an average price of $6.00 per bushel and wheat farmers received an average price of $6.00 per bushel. A corn farmer who attempted to sell at $7.00 per bushel, or a wheat grower who attempted to sell for $8.00 per bushel, would not have found any buyers. A perfectly competitive firm will not sell below the equilibrium price either. Why should they when they can sell all they want at the higher price? Other examples of agricultural markets that operate in close to perfectly competitive markets are small roadside produce markets and small organic farmers” (Principles of Economics, pg.

As shown by Exhibit 7, the price of banana in the world market declined from 1992 to 1994. This could be due to the fact that EU import restrictions forced most of Chiquita’s produce found its way into the US domestic market thereby depressing the prices here. This dealt a double blow to Chiquita as this meant its margins in the US domestic market were reduced thereby affecting its revenues.

The author of the book, “The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World” (2008), Dan Koeppel, who is a famous journalist describes in a fascinating way banana’s cultural importance, threats associated with the crops of banana in the future and banana’ history. Banana is a very delicious fruit and is eaten all over the world. Banana is one of the world’s fourth largest harvests in the world. Dole and Chiquita are eminent American based distributors and producers of banana. They are claiming to produce the banana on low price. In this book, Koeppel discusses the risks associated to the plantation of banana around the world. He also discusses the fact that due to blight, the plantation of banana is destroyed (Koeppel, 2008). He points out that the farmers and the producers have no insight at all regarding this matter (Koeppel, 2008).

Stephen J. A. Ward said in “Ethics in a Nutshel” “The analysis, evaluation, and promotion of correct conduct and/or good character, according to the best available standards is identified as ethics” (Behrens and J. Rosen 264). One of my best friends is an extremely intelligent person who achieves excellent grades in all the subjects except English. He took the full senior project from another friend who graduated last year. We often hang out, and do our projects together. A week before submission, I asked him if he could proof read mine and I would proof read his. As soon as I start reading, I was getting angry and frustrated with the level of vocabulary, sentence formation, and grammar he used, I knew there was no way an ESL student could

People from all walks of life face many ethical dilemmas. These dilemmas have consequences. Our worldview determines how we deal with these dilemmas, and guides us to the right decisions. In this essay, I will examine an ethical issues through my Christian worldview. I will also present other viewpoints, and compare them to mine.

These preferential arrangements gave Caribbean countries the primary source of their income and a contributed significantly to the social fabric of the society, through the provision of employment and economic growth. Market forces played a very restricted role in the dynamics of the Caribbean Business Environment which was largely due to these foreign preferential arrangements (e.g. England purchasing sugar from Barbados at premium price even though the same sugar can be sourced from another supplier considerably cheaper). However, organizations such as World Trade Organisation (WTO) have lobbied in favor of the removal of these trading arrangements, sighting that these forms of intervention prevent the law of demand and supply from efficiently allocating resources and result in market failure. Therefore Today’s Caribbean economic environment has had to evolve rapidly to meet the increasing global demand for high productivity at low cost as a result of global competitive forces.

Introduction: For the subject choosing a strategy to overcome effects of EU’s banana policy, I have gone through the whole issue of EU’s banana policy and its effects on the banana business of Latin America in general and Chiquita Brands International in particular. I have also analyzed the way the whole issue has been approached by the company and tried to formulate a plan that may prove successful for the company. Since the present problem is a serious nature threatening the existence of a big player in the banana market, I have tried to go back to history of the company of highly political nature of the international policy making in this trade. I have tried to understand the role of

After the research finds out that price is a factor to cause the gap, it will continue to investigate more on to what extend the price offers convinced customer to unethically purchase and abandon their ethical intention. As shown on figure 4.4.2, the mean scores tend to increase along with the increasing in the degree of price reduction of unethical products for both Thais and UK charts. This means that both nations tend to accept unethical garment if it offer a price reduction. Also, on every degrees of price saving, Thai have more tendency to buy unethically made cloth than UK. To clarify, both of the chart from Thailand and UK show a linear distribution and have a positive relationship between price reduction and unethical purchasing behaviour. This is another evidence to suggest that the rival of ethical product price is a factor that makes people neglect their ethical goals. Also, it suggests that price sensitivity of customers are a factor that widen the gap. The result is corresponding with Jägel et al. (2012), and Creyer and Ross (1997) as they suggested that without price reduction on ethical product people will find a cheaper alternative and emphasize more on price than ethical issues.

Preference Erosion has had a major impact on the banana growers in the ACP countries in recent years. Preference Erosion is the "decrease in the margin between a preferential tariff rate and the MFN tariff rate originating from tariff liberalization" (Silva, 2010). Many banana growers have preferential trade agreements with many of the developed countries, such as U.S. and Europe. These agreements enable the banana growers to have preferential tariff arrangements with countries when exporting their commodity. Banana's represent a major source of foreign exchange due to their preferential treatment, which in turn allows them to "employ a large proportion of the rural poor and contribute significantly to food security" (Garcia, 2004). Liberalizing agricultural trade could have a negative impact on food security in these ACP countries by increasing the prices of imports rather than exports. By implementing tariff reductions, preferential margins continue to reduce which results in major adjustment costs for these ACP countries. These countries have benefited so much from market access for their exports of bananas, that "preferential access may in some cases have constrained efforts to improve production costs or processing efficiencies" (Garcia, 2004). Multilateral liberalization will therefore erode margins,

In February 1993 the EU adopted the Common Organisation of the Market in Bananas, a single market regime based on quota, tariff and license protection for bananas imports from twelve Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) former colonies; places like Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Belize. The deal upset governments in Latin American countries, where U.S. based companies run industrial fruit plantations. In 1993, five Latin American countries, backed by the U.S., filed their first formal trade complaint at the World Trade Organization (WTO). As the dispute escalated, other countries joined the battle against the EU tariffs. Since then, the EU has offered tariff cuts several times. Each time, those cuts were deemed insufficient and were followed by another WTO complaint. In 1999, the WTO authorized the U.S. to impose $191.4 million of trade sanctions on the EU. The last WTO ruling, again upholding the complaint, was issued in early 2008. Trade ministers tried, and failed,

The global food market is dominated by the most affluent countries, which, on average, have controlled almost 70 percent of the total value of imports and over 62 percent of the total value of exports of all agricultural products in the world since 1961 (see Table 1). During the last quarter of the twentieth century, these countries have been reducing the value of their imports while expanding the value of their exports. Food imports by these countries typically concentrate on

What is ethics? Our textbook defines ethics as the study of right and wrong conduct. Who is it that decides what the right and wrong conduct is? We should all have personal ethics, but it is the legislation who decides what out ethics should be as a whole and those are our laws. The main focus of ethics is moral values. If we have a job and know a co-worker is stealing should we tell or not tell? Do we call the police if we know someone is abusing there child or not? In these two examples the ethical choice seems more like common sense, yet some people would do nothing because they do not want to get involved. Where do we draw the line? That’s why we have laws based on ethical principles so that those who decide not to make ethical

I then decided to accept the original price. I was able to buy from South America 200 kilograms of coffee at $205. Next was 500 pounds of beef cattle for $352. I then sold cheese for $144 to Australia, which he said, was a fair price. The global economic conditions are still in the red at this time so I will try to improve this by offering them more money for their goods. I offered $400 for one troy ounce of gold and $200 for 100 kilograms of cocoa from Africa. I paid $550 for metric tons of steel and $800 for 1 metric ton of rubber from Asia. I then paid $1200 for 1 metric ton of aluminum and $250 for 10 metric tons of coal from Australia. This strategy has not improved the global economy at all and for the rest of the game I am just going to stick with the original price offered. I then paid $158 for 1000 board feet of lumber, $2147 for 100 barrels of crude oil and sold 100 kilograms of cheese for $252 and 25 pairs of shoes for $565. By this time I was finally in the green on the global economic conditions table and decided to end my trading since I did all the goods besides the bananas I was once again unable to