Del Monte: Bitter Fruits
UnpublishedSeptember
1976
Volume:
10
Number:
7
Article
California is a land of agricultural abundance. The state's three largest valleys -- the Sacramento, the San Joaquin, and the Imperial - are cornucopias from which flow a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and grains.
David Olsen
In the late 1950's a San Francisco banker returned from an East African safari with a story - not of big game - but of a discarded Del Monte can he had found on the trail hundreds of miles into the African interior. Del Monte management soon ascertained that "many Del Monte products were indeed packed along on expeditions.
Talking to a reporter from Forbes recently, Del Monte's chairman Alfred Eames mused, banana trees "are like money trees. I wish we had more of them.
Since colonial times, the economies of the Third World have been structured to serve the world capitalist market. While the dominant capitalist countries have become independent industrial powers, the economies of many Third World countries have remained dependent on the export of agricultural commodities and raw materials.
Around the world, agribusiness corporations are moving into regions that are struggling with the problems of malnutrition, poverty and land distribution. The corpora- tions usually pose as saviors, claiming that their fertilizers, tractors, hybrid seeds, and food processing plants will help solve the Third World's problems by expanding food production and providing employment opportunities.
Bob Barber
Cannery workers employed by Del Monte and other food-processing giants in Northern California face a major stumbling block in their efforts to gain decent wages and safe working conditions: the leadership of the Teamsters Union, which holds a contract with the billion dollar industry. The Teamsters got those contracts in much the same way they have attempted to enter the agricultural fields to break the United Farm Workers union, coming in during the 1930s and 1940s at the invitation of the companies to break left-wing unions.