Transportation.
As bananas are all grown in the tropics and all sold in temperate countries, the industry is to a large extent a question of transportation. This phase of the subject has received much more care ful attention than has the more strictly agricul tural side. The business is chiefly in the hands of large companies, which are interested primarily in transportation. These are now consolidated, so that nearly all the fruit received in the northern markets is handled by the United Fruit Company.
When locating plantations in Costa Rica, land is usually selected through which it is possible to construct railroads, this consideration bearing quite as much weight as the nature of the land. Every effort is made to handle the fruit promptly. In many cases it is possible to leave the fruit on the plant until the steamer that is to transport it is sighted. Telephonic orders are then sent to the different plantation managers and the fruit is rushed in by train-loads, so that it not infrequently happens that a steamer leaves the wharf at Port Limon with 30,000 bunches of Fig. 286. Loading into cars that run to the wharf. Costa Merl.
bananas that were growing in the plantations twenty-four hours before. The service calls for
steamers especially constructed to carry this fruit. The holds are especially well ventilated, and in many of the more recent steamers the air is arti ficially cooled before it passes over the fruit. Cold storage in the ordinary sense can not be applied to the banana. If the green fruit is subjected to a temperature much below it is injured, so that, although it may keep almost indefinitely, it will never ripen. To avoid this, the wharves and the cars into which the bananas are loaded are heated in bringing the fruit into northern ports in the winter months.
The distribution of bananas to the various cities is handled with the same expedition as the ship ping. Before a cargo arrives it is apportioned to the different centers of consumption, so that in a few hours after the arrival of a ship the fruit is on its way to distant parts of the country.
Literature.
The Banana in Hawaii, J. E. Higgins (1904), Hawaii Agric. Exp. Sta., Bull. No. 7 ; The Banana Industry in Jamaica, Wm. Fawcett (1903), Bull. Botanical Dept., Jamaica, Vol. IX, part 9; Text-Book of Tropical Agriculture, H Nicholls (1892).