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A Trip To the Windward Isles
In the summer of 2005, four Geography teachers and an Ethical Trading consultant (all from the United Kingdom) travelled to the Windward Isles in the Caribbean. Our trip was organized by ‘Farming and Countryside Education’, sponsored by ‘Windwards Bananas’ and supported by the ‘Geographical Association’.
The Windward Isles consist of four countries:
We were based in Castries, the capital of St Lucia but we also stayed in Dominica and St Vincent. We travelled for 2 weeks with representatives from Windwards Bananas to study the geography of the Windwards and to look critically at their current position within the global banana industry. A visit to Grenada wasn’t included in the itinerary because the banana crop hadn’t sufficiently recovered after Hurricane Ivan (2004).
Windwards Bananas are a co-operative trading company owned by the Windwards banana growers. The co-operative approach provides growers with greater opportunities to access the international market place than if they were trading alone.
We travelled extensively around the islands, focusing on:-
The Windward Isles are both fascinating and beautiful. They also offer a wealth of opportunities to geographers. In a relatively small area the geographer can study tectonic processes, development issues, tropical rainforest habitats, the impacts of global trade, coral reefs, coastal processes, cultural geography, sustainability and so on. We tried to get a ‘geographical overview’ of the islands but focused our research on the banana industry.
The importance of the banana industry to the Windwards was self evident on the trip as was the value of Fairtrade to banana growers. The group discussed at length the benefits and drawbacks of Fairtrade with the banana growers and representatives of Windwards Bananas.
None of the growers have become rich from Fairtrade. Many of them are still struggling to make ends meet, whilst trying to meet the stringent criteria Fairtrade insists upon. Fairtrade does, however, provide growers with continued access to a small part of an increasingly aggressive global market place. Growers are paid a significantly increased price for a case of Fairtrade bananas. Furthermore, Fairtrade provides local communities with a ‘social premium’ which enables them to build schools, roads, community centres and so on.
Our trip enabled us to develop a perspective of the Windwards that only primary research can provide. Nevertheless we felt that other geographers may be able to benefit from the evidence we collected. The close collaboration with people from the Windwards would help at least, to lessen our UK bias. Whilst we can’t replicate the fieldwork experience, we aimed to provide a small window into the Windward Isles for geographers who haven’t been there.
We wanted to produce resources based on this trip that are
As a result, we decided to make a teaching resource that would be available through the internet with a CD version to follow. We hope that some of these resources, such as the maps and the photos, will also be useful to teachers and students from the WindwardIsles themselves.
*Windward Bananas are known also known as WIBDECO (Windward Isles Banana Development and Export Company)