The banana production in Guadeloupe - strategic positioning.
The banana is produced in Guadeloupe in an island environment of weak surface and very populated. The tourism, enticed by the variety of the landscapes and the quality of the natural environment, constitutes one of the main economic activities of the island. In such a context the banana production cannot be sustainable without a consideration of the impact of the culturales practices on the environment. In this domain, the most sensitive points appear to be the contagion of waters of river by pesticides and fertilizers used for the banana production and the damages to the maritime environment (coral reef, eutrophication) by the deposit of sediments bound to the erosion of the agricultural lands. The visual pollutions due to the use of polyethylene bags to protect the bunches of bananas are also frequently pointed out.
On the other hand, the banana production in the Antilles is more and more strongly competed on its own European market by the banana from dollar areas and ACP Africa. The specific frame of the banana production in Guadeloupe is that of the Organisation Communautaire du Marché de la Banane (Community Organization of the Market of the Banana- OCMB), set up in 1996, fixing the rules of the market according to the situation of the producing countries with regard to the European Union which consumes approximately 4 million tons of banana. Under different pressures, the initial version of the OCMB underwent successive modifications putting every time in question the competitiveness of the West Indies french overseas departments. Even if the last version (version III in effect since January 1st, 1999) assures, by a system of compensatory help to the loss of recipe, a minimal price for the community productions, it does not guarantee any more the sale of the production. In this context of over-supply of European banana trees markets, the West-Indies bananas, which show a weak competitiveness (less regular quality, high cost of production and marketing, less effective marketing system) are more difficult to market than bananas issued from the dollar area.
In view of these various observations, the Guadeloupe production has to look for competitive advantages and turn deliberately, on one hand, to new production systems more sustainable, and on the other hand to quality products. Such an effort of differentiation and segmentation, with new modes of consumption, has for consequence a requirement of communication from the producer towards the consumer. Guarantees brought to the consumers can only be through a quite particular effort of traceability of the product.
To do it, it is important to define guidelines at the different levels of the field, and to have objective and relevant indicators allowing to follow the production conditions and to guarantee the respect for these guidelines. These indicators are based, upstream, on geo-referencing techniques of the environment constituents and the culturales practices allowing to turn to guaranteed production systems valuing the specificity of the production conditions.
Successful tools must be elaborated in such purposes and given to the different operators of the field, and the producers in particular, who must be able to consider them not as supplementary constraints imposed by the market or by the administration, but as so many opportunities to increase the value of their product, the banana, and this in an inescapable perspective of conservation of a banana production in the West Indies.
