The Better Banana You Can't Get in L.A.

WHAT IF I TOLD YOU there’s a better banana out there?

A banana that’s organic, Fairtrade-certified, and grown by small, democratically-organized farmer cooperatives. A banana that not only aligns with progressive politics, but whose mere existence is generative to a world and food system that one could feel proud to participate in just by eating it. A banana that can be found all over the country: from Lakewinds Natural Foods in Minnesota to Turnip Truck in Tennessee, to the Park Slope Food Co-op and even via FreshDirect delivery in New York City.

Now what if I told you that you cannot get it anywhere in Los Angeles?

The better bananas are real, and many of them are brought to the U.S. by the Massachusetts-based distributor Equal Exchange. But while the distribution network for the bananas extends across the country, neither Equal Exchange nor any other distributor sells them anywhere in Los Angeles — or anywhere in California south of Solvang, for that matter.

In a city where produce enthusiasts can get anything from starfruit to red Malaysian guava, how could it possibly be true that organic, Fairtrade, traceable bananas are out of our reach?

This question has tormented Caitlin Sullivan, the supply chain-obsessed co-owner of LA Grocery & Cafe in Melrose Hill. When Sullivan was preparing to open the store in 2023, she was set on providing the most equitable bananas she could find.

Bananas are America’s most consumed fruit, and you can, of course, find them almost anywhere in Los Angeles. Grocery stores citywide stock organic and conventional bananas grown by major suppliers like Dole, Chiquita, and Del Monte. According to a scuffed-up sign at the Port of San Diego, Dole alone ships about 2.5 billion bananas into the port every year. For the conscious consumer, bananas with stickers that boast certifications like Rainforest Alliance or G.R.O.W. (Giving Resources and Opportunities to Workers) can be found on the shelves of your local health food store.

Beyond its designation as a commodity good, the banana is also central to Southern California's cultural identity. Charlie Chaplin’s 1915 short By the Sea, thought to be the first film to make use of a character slipping on a banana peel, was filmed on location in Santa Monica. Many tons of bananas are blended daily to fuel this city's unquenchable smoothie thirst. And don’t forget the frozen banana — a decades-long feud over its invention still rages today between two shops on Orange County’s Balboa Island. And the main characters of the highest-grossing animated franchise in history, created right here in Los Angeles, famously know only one English word: “banana.”

But the history of banana distribution in the United States is long and rotten. In the early 20th century, the United Fruit Company — an American corporation that has since been refracted and refined into Chiquita Brands International — became notorious for the installation of submissive dictatorships (also known as “banana republics”) in Central America and the Caribbean that would allow the company to operate an expansive, exploitative agricultural network. By 1954, UFCO owned three million acres of land, 1,514 miles of railway, and a fleet of 49 fully refrigerated fruit ships in the region, while operating one of Central America's biggest wireless communication networks. The company earned the nickname “El Pulpo,” or “The Octopus,” among locals for its far-reaching tentacles.

To maintain its market dominance, UFCO would frequently interfere in the foreign governments of the countries where it had operations, creating the conditions for massacres of restive agricultural workers, coups against uncooperative leaders, and seeding corruption across the land by paying massive bribes to avoid export taxes. While Chiquita, now based in Switzerland, has made efforts to rehabilitate its image in the past decade, in recent years the company was found liable by a U.S. court for providing aid to far-right Colombian paramilitary groups and fired the entirety of its Panamanian workforce after an employee pension-related strike.

To this day, the working conditions on farms that produce your grocery store banana — even a Rainforest Alliance or G.R.O.W. sticker-certified banana — can be hard to track down.

Sullivan was looking for a banana that she could assure her customers had been grown as ethically as possible, and settled on Equal Exchange as the ideal partner. The company, founded in 1986, started out importing Nicaraguan coffee in defiance of the U.S. embargo against the leftist Sandinista government. Since then, they’ve steadily developed an alternative trade model for goods produced by a network of farmer co-ops around the world. Today Equal Exchange, a co-op itself, distributes a range of commodity goods like coffee, tea, and chocolate. In 2014, they took to distributing the banana, the most commodified fruit of all, from farmer cooperatives in Ecuador and Peru.

Sullivan eagerly reached out to place an order with her produce distributor. But much to her surprise, the request was politely declined. The issue, they told her, was one of demand.

“There needs to be a critical mass of retailers who want to purchase these bananas in order for Equal Exchange to make it worth their while to bring them to Southern California,” says Sullivan. “So we need either a coalition of small businesses, or we need one big business like a Vons or an Erewhon to demand that their customers have access to this.”

Seeking banana answers, I went to ask the source: Jessie Myszka, the National Sales Manager for Equal Exchange. How many stores would it take to get better bananas to L.A.?

“It’s not necessarily about the square footage,” she told me. “It's how much volume they're pushing through at their stores and how many shoppers they have. It could even be something like a smoothie shop that’s moving through a lot of bananas.”

The hard numbers? “You’d need about 90 small retailers, or 45 medium retailers.”

Equal Exchange does distribute multiple products to the L.A. area, but those tend to be more shelf-stable options like coffee and chocolate. But bananas have a much shorter lifespan. Myszka said that in order for Equal Exchange to distribute bananas in a region, they need to be able to import 20 pallets — or 4,800 to 5,400 bananas — at a time. “And that container has to get sold into stores within, ideally, one week. Maybe two.”

Demand is often a condition of price. So how much does an Equal Exchange banana cost compared to its counterparts currently on L.A. grocery store stands?

At major chains like Vons, Ralphs and Pavilions, conventionally-produced bananas typically cost 20 or 30 cents each. An organic banana goes for about 33 to 40 cents. Rainforest Alliance or G.R.O.W. certified bananas at Whole Foods, which allocate a portion of profits to be reinvested in farming communities, usually cost about the same  as the organic version.

But by far the most recognizable of these certifications is Fairtrade. Fairtrade International, founded in 1997, is widely considered to be the most holistic and rigorous standard of equitable certification for crops historically farmed and exported through exploitative trade systems.

In a deeply confusing twist, Fairtrade-certified bananas like those distributed by Equal Exchange are not to be confused with Fair Trade USA, another certification program. The two groups were once affiliates, but Fairtrade split off in 2011 due to differing philosophies regarding the inclusion of large farms and plantations.

So, to clarify: can you get a Fair Trade banana in Los Angeles? Absolutely. But a Fairtrade banana? Not a chance. 

“There are many labels and certifications out there, so it’s understandable that consumers might have a hard time keeping up with them all and their various approaches,” said Robert Desson, Senior Business Partnerships Manager of North American Fresh Produce at Fairtrade Canada.

Desson pointed to his group’s farmer-centered pricing model as one of the key differences between Fairtrade and other certifiers like Fair Trade USA. Each organization sets the minimum price distributors are allowed to pay for a case, plus a premium to protect farmers and account for any potential volatility in the market. Fairtrade sets a higher minimum banana price, which means more money in the farmer’s pocket.  

As for the per-banana cost of an Equal Exchange banana, Myszka has seen it range from 32 to 60 cents depending on the region. That’s certainly pricier than its conventional counterparts. But for Sullivan, it’s the cost of participating in a supply chain she feels good about.

And why should bananas in Los Angeles be cheap? They’re a labor-intensive crop prone to bruising, picked green, shipped in refrigerated containers, and housed in massive forced-ripening warehouses in DTLA for days before they even reach grocery shelves. For Sullivan, it’s the 20-cent banana that doesn’t add up.

Could it be that the lack of co-op grocery stores in Los Angeles is the precise reason why we can’t get traceable, co-op-grown bananas? Myszka told me that the presence of Equal Exchange bananas in American grocery stores is intrinsically tied to regional co-ops, who work to build up enough customer interest to warrant an initial order. Equal Exchange then matches up their co-op partners with a distributor, and once a critical mass is reached by an initial retailer, it’s easier for others in the region to join in.

But Los Angeles is home to a whopping one co-op grocery store, Co-Opportunity in Santa Monica, though some hope the number will increase to two through the work of SoLA Co-Op to develop a store in South L.A. But co-ops take time and a persistence of vision to organize: SoLA’s store has been in development for 10 years and counting, and according to its website is still in the feasibility stage.

As for the future of Equal Exchange bananas in Los Angeles, Myszka is optimistic, noting a promising conversation with Lassen’s in March. Desson remains optimistic too. “Los Angeles is the largest fair trade city in the country and the fourth largest in the world, so we know the consumer demand for Fairtrade bananas is there,” he said. “They just need to be made available.”

Sullivan continues to carry G.R.O.W. bananas when they’re available, resorting to organic Chiquitas when they aren’t. Occasionally, she’ll order a batch of small, custardy “ice cream” bananas grown by Ron Finley at his garden in West Adams for smoothies at the store’s cafe.

But her quest to sell a better banana continues. “The benefit of a fair trade equal exchange banana is that it's more about the health of the planet and the health of the people who are producing it than it is about your personal health,” she told me. “It’s about planetary health, community health, humanitarian health — which of course has an effect on your personal health at the end of the day. It's all connected.”

Vanessa Anderson is a writer, culinary anthropologist, and the voice behind Grocery Goblin, a project that examines American culinary and consumer culture through the lens of the grocery store.