Trident and tropical fruit: reversing the race to the bottom

I wonder if it is the same people who think bananas and pineapples are produced in decent and safe conditions for human health that think that nuclear submarines are safe... and necessary. This may well seem like a random thought, but, for those of us who are trying to facilitate a transition to a world based on social and economic justice and one which leaves the natural environment in a healthy state for future generations, it is not as random as it may first appear.

In the world of tropical fruit produced for the richer consumers on the planet we speak of a “race to the bottom”, a race to produce and sell as much and as cheaply as possible. But “cheap”, in practice in the current ill-logic of the world economy, means more environmental and social costs, costs that are not included in the price we pay at this end.

The race, now led by the world's giant supermarket chains and, in the case of bananas and pineapples, five multinational fruit companies, is about finding production areas for industrial-scale tropical fruit plantations where wages are low, working hours can be illegally long and where the bill for the damage to workers' health, water-courses, marine life or tropical soils does not have to be paid... at least not by the owners of the production or by the traders of cheap fruit sold in Tesco, WalMart, Aldi, Lidl or Carrefour.

The arms race, of which Trident is the very British symbol, is not just a race to the bottom – of the oceans in the case of nuclear submarines – in the literal sense, but also in terms of environmental, social and economic sustainability.. just like the race to deliver tropical fruit to predatory retail buyers in Europe and North America.

The difference with the nuclear race to the bottom is that it is not subject to the same logic of keeping the price as low as possible. Trident has only one buyer and it is not a supermarket chain subject to consumer pressure like Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury! We, the “consumers” of Trident, can pressure the buyer with the argument that we don't want it, but, in this case, the buyer is not in the position of needing to re-sell at 59p per kilo (or whatever unsustainably low price you like) and satisfy customers and share-holders. Market forces, albeit driven by a cruel economistic (ill-)logic, do not apply.

The cost-price of Trident is not subject to consumer opinion or behaviour, it seems. The decision by the “buyer” about whether or not to pay the price of a new generation of “racers to the oceans' bottom” is a decision of those who govern... where “governing”, as a former French prime minister, Raymond Barre,(who died today) just put it on the radio, is about “prioritising the national interest”; but what are “national interests” in a rapidly globalising world economy? This is precisely the 20th century thinking and language that has to change if we're to reach the 22nd century intact.

Campaigns about bananas, pineapples and Trident may not, at first glance, have much in common, but, as I've tried to argue, it's about what we – citizen-consumers of the world more and more united by the minute – want. More importantly, it's about what we need and about refusing to accept the ill-/logics that are presented to us by government or supermarket buyers as the natural order.

As France's biggest non-nuclear cultural export, Manu Chao, puts it in his 2007 album “Welcome to paradise”: “This world go crazy... it's no fatality!”

Alistair Smith, International Coordinator of Banana Link, 24th August 2007, Aude, France, 24th August 2007.

www.bananalink.org.uk