Banana meeting starts tomorrow

A major workshop opens here tomorrow at Buccama on the Bay.

The Windward Islands Farmers’ Association (WINFA) is hosting the two-day workshop, which runs from the 22nd to 23rd January. {{more}}The workshop is being held in preparation for the second International Banana Conference to be held in Brussels from April 28 to 30th, 2005.

This forum will be a follow-up to the first ever International Conference held in Brussels, Belgium in 1998, which brought together many of the disparate elements involved in the international banana trade. That meeting sought to seek consensus on ways and means to tackle the major problems in the banana industry.

The main organizers of the 1998 meeting were a broad alliance of the Latin American Coordination of Banana Workers (COLSIBA), WINFA, the European Banana Action Network (EUROBAN), the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Tobacco and Allied Workers Union (IUF) and the United States Labour Education in the Americas Project (US/LEAP).

WINFA said that the grouping came together given the fundamental changes in the nature of the European banana regime since 1993 which has brought about a protracted crisis in the banana industry and in world trade in that commodity.