Bananas have become common good in our diets for the past few decades. We put them into our kids’ lunchboxes, eat them as a healthy snack and invent ambitious recipes to make banana bread, banana shakes and even banana crisps. We surely love our bananas and the competition between them and apples as our most preferred fruits is ferocious! However, much like a lot of the things we eat, we don’t wonder enough where our bananas come from and under which conditions they were produced. True, we seem to be increasingly concerned with environmental sustainability, but what about socio-economic sustainability? Do we really care about the ones who produce our bananas? The answer is probably that we should. Human rights violations are still very much prevalent in banana production. Labor rights are not respected, the right to freedom of association is not guaranteed and workers’ health is often impaired due to dire working conditions. But at the same time, what’s to be expected when we often pay less for our bananas as compared to apples? To discuss this issue Fairtrade Belgium is inviting you to a webinar on February 10^th between 11h30 and 13h. During the webinar we will reflect together with banana farmers, experts, civil society organizations, public sector and the industry on how to address the human cost of low cost bananas and identify ways forward. Together we can turn the tide and take important steps forward to make sure that all bananas sold in Belgium were produced in conditions respecting both the environment and human rights.

Register HERE.