After having reached an agreement at an assembly, producers from the municipality started the day by tearing down stalks of bananas, as a new strategy to defend the price of the fruit that had been plummeting because of market saturation.
At a meeting held on Wednesday, which was attended by Franz West Alcaraz, president of the Regional Union of Banana Producers from the Pacific Centre, Colima, Jalisco and Michoacan, as well as by local leaders, the producers of banana from Coahuayana agreed to only harvest 50 stalks of banana per hectare and to tear down the rest so thy don't access the domestic market to avoid saturating it.
Due to this measure, producers will throw away 170 tons of bananas on Thursday, i.e. nearly 11 shipments that would have been sent to different national markets. Producers expect that this will help increase the price of the giant dwarf, the most commercial banana variety, from 80 cents per kilogram to 1.5 pesos.
Thanks to this measure, banana producers from the Township of Coahuayana, the most important area at the regional level due to its organization, production, and fruit quality, have become the spearhead in a new way to control markets as they have stated that their intention is to invite producers from Colima and Jalisco to sell only 50 stalks per hectare to avoid saturation in warehouses and supply centers in the country.
To this end, the Regional Union of Banana Producers from the Pacific Center, Colima, Jalisco, and Michoacan stated that it would meet with the neighboring banana association of Cerro de Ortega, Colima on Friday and with the banana association of Tecoman on Monday, to invite them to join this new strategy of self-regulating their marketing. Finally, producers said that at the beginning of this strategy, the fruit that wasn't going to be marketed would be deposited outside the office of the Association of Banana Producers of Coahuayana in Hidalgo, on the road to Michoacan, as a public demonstration protesting against the low prices paid to producers via intermediaries.
Source: quadratin.com.mx