There are those who insist that the higher results shown in the foregoing table may easily be obtained by any one who will give as much thought and labor to growing bananas as are required for the successful raising of corn or of potatoes. It is true that the figures on which the averages shown are based were, in many cases, from the experience of native and other planters of little diligence and skill, and that they got smaller results than might easily have been obtained. It may be possible that if one will allow two or three stalks to rise from each stand of bananas, and together mature their fruit, he many get 444 to 780 bunches from an acre each of a few years, and that in such a case he might get $185 to $278 for the crop; but it will be clear to all that he who expects to make only 270 bunches per annum from an acre, and get only $78 profit therefrom, will be safer than he who invests his money with the expectation of making greater gains.
The Hand Book of Nicaragua, published by the Bureau of American Republics, which is under the direction of the U. S. Department of State, says:
There is, perhaps, no industry in Central America that is more attractive to men of small capital than banana growing, from the fact that the clearing of the land is effected cheaply, and from the small cost of after-cultivation, which is limited only to such clearing of weeds and undergrowth as may be sufficient to allow access to the trees, and the short time necessary to produce a paying crop. When the trees and brush that have been cut in clearing the land become sufficiently dry, they are burned, and the banana suckers are then planted among the charred remains and ashes, without any further preparation of the soil. The best results are obtained by giving the trees plenty of space, say from 15 to 18 feet apart. In about ten months the first fruit can be gathered; but in the second year the trees reach maturity, and by a proper management of the fruit stalks in a fair sized plantation a constant succession in the crop may be secured, and fruit gathered every week throughout the year.
The only careful work necessary on a banana plantation is in handling the heavy bunches so as to avoid bruising them, as any such injury causes a black spot to appear, beneath which decay quickly begins as the fruit ripens. The natives have learned by experience when they cut into the fruit stalk so to gauge the strength of the blow as to cut just deep enough to cause the stalk to bend slowly over until the end of the bunch reaches the ground, when another slash with the machete severs it, and it is loaded carefully into the cart.
A plantation of 40 manzanas (about 69 acres) will, during and after the second year, produce about 54,000 bunches. The lowest price paid for bunches for some years past is 37½ cents per bunch, which would give an annual value of the crop of $20,250, or more than double the expenditure for purchase of land, clearing, cultivating and gathering the crop, and all expenses to the end of the second year.
As the cost of producing bananas after the first crop from a plantation is confined to cultivating and harvesting, which may be done for $10 per acre yearly, it is scarcely wonderful that Judge O’Hara, late U. S. Consul at Greytown, Nicaragua, a lawyer whose acute mind is trained to sifting evidence, reported to the Department of State at Washington regarding banana-growing on the Atlantic coast of that republic, that:
It seems reasonably certain that bananas on the Bluefields River pay better than many crops in the United States. * * * * These figures would seem to indicate that at the end of a year a planter having 36 acres of bananas under cultivation would have $3,847.32 left after paying for all necessary labor and provisions—figures apt to bring discontent to an American farmer having but 36 acres of wheat or corn; and especially so when he compares the price of his land, ranging from $15 to $80 per acre, with that of land in eastern Nicaragua, where cultivated lands may be said to have no established market value, few improved plantations having ever been sold.
BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY
