Interrupcion touts organic, fair trade bananas

05/03/2012
Mike Hornick

Courtesy Interrupcion*Interrupcion*'s certified fair trade, organic bananas are sourced from a cooperative in Ecuador’s El Oro province. Buenos Aires, Argentina-based Interrupcion has introduced organic- and fair trade-certified bananas under its Taste Me Do Good program.

Shipments to the U.S. are expected to double soon and reach 16,000 cartons per week, according to a news release.

Last year sales of the organization’s produce generated more than $180,000 in fair trade premiums to producers in Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador, according to the release. Interrupcion represents more than 2,000 farms and cooperatives in South and Central America.

The bananas are sourced from a cooperative in Ecuador’s El Oro province that gained fair trade certification in November.

Interrupcion commodities include pineapple, mango, plums, grapes, blackberries, raspberries, asparagus and avocados.

The organization also claims to have been the first supplier of fair trade-certified Argentine and Chilean conventional and organic blueberries, organic apples, organic pears, conventional cherries and conventional kiwifruit, to the U.S. market.

Comments (1) Leave a comment 

The text is confusing. As far as I know, Argentina does not produce organic bananas. Also it is highly doubtful that it imports organic banana for an almost non existent internal organic market. Therefore, it is not clear the relationship between Argentina and the Ecuadorean organic banana producing cooperative . Also, in the text of the news the mixture of organic and fairtrade produce claimed to be exported from Argentina and Chile is misleading. For example, organic apples and pears have been exported from Argentina to the US for a long time and, therefore, do not sustain the claim in the text of being the first exporters of those two organic products. A more precise and clear text would be certainly welcome.