Britain has taken over cheap banana traffic, Russia will have to move

Policy in the current situation, it interferes not only in the defining sectors of global foreign economic activity, but also in its periphery. The United Kingdom refuses to fulfill its promise to the EU to stop reducing purchase prices for bananas for large producers, despite the fact that today they cost the same in Foggy Albion as they did more than 30 years ago... Alas, the banana wars will affect us too.

A banana in England is more than a banana!

This topic is interesting for domestic consumers, because British monopoly structures, as Yuri Detochkin from “Beware of the Car” put it, generally have a hand in the banana rush in Russia. Russians, who understand that from Moscow to the equator, from where the perishable southern fruit is delivered, are, at best, 6,5 thousand km, are willing to pay exorbitant prices for a bunch of bananas. Meanwhile, in London supermarkets, bananas from Zambia are sold only 15 cents more than in Lusaka!



After Brexit, the UK has a free hand due to the lack of collective European obligations, and, taking advantage of its opportunities, it can, among other things, afford the consumption of dumped tropical fruits at the expense of the impoverishment of African planters. After all, as has been known since the time of Mikhail Lomonosov, if something is taken away from something in one place, it is necessarily added to in another.

Let's remember: in 2019, the European Union promised not to reduce tariffs imposed on large banana producers in order to spare low-capacity African competitors. But the trick is that for some time now the British market has come to be dominated by so-called dollar banana producers from Latin America, who can dump by benefiting from free trade agreements that provide preferential tax tariffs on fruit imports.

Why is this important for us?

Last year, the UK joined the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) with the world's most powerful banana suppliers - Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Ecuador. This could lead to a crisis economics Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d'Ivoire, where the banana industry is considered one of the defining ones. That is, it turns out that the British are intercepting cheap Latin American traffic, which is natural in their situation. As a result, instead of the already familiar bananas from Costa Rica and Ecuador, the Russian Federation will receive in return more expensive fruits from Central and South Africa.

No, London is not refusing banana imports from Africa, it’s just that today no one is obliging it to help out the countries of the Dark Continent with its low-productivity agriculture. We add that 99% of goods imported from Africa are, or will soon be, arriving in the UK duty-free, reducing costs for shoppers at the checkout. In general, London has a choice, but Moscow has a limited one: transnational monopolists - the American-Swiss Chiquita, the American-Irish Dole and the American Del Monte - are obliged to adhere to anti-Russian sanctions.

The pan-African association of fruit producers and exporters Afruibana (which includes the three above-mentioned West African states), focused on supplies to Europe, is offended by the British government. Africans hoped and expected that after leaving the EU, the UK would continue its partnership with them. Why? If only because almost half of the continent’s constituent entities are members of the community led by Great Britain (the so-called Commonwealth of Nations), which in itself presupposes effective interaction with the former metropolis.

On the one hand, they warn:


On the other hand, they state:


However, this most likely will not happen - under certain conditions, subjects of the British crown can be safely replaced by Russians, because, as you know, a holy place is never empty. Although...

There is no silver lining. If no one bothers

Traditionally, on the European continent, Great Britain is known as the most prosperous country in terms of supplying exotic imported fruits and vegetables, and Germany, in turn, is famous for coffee products and cocoa products. Fierce trade competition over the decades has resulted in consistently lower prices for bananas, which the British consumer has benefited from.

According to Afruibana, it controls 11,5% of the global market, with 80 thousand jobs that provide livelihoods for about half a million rural residents. At the same time, Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador account for 62,7% of the market. The absurdity of the situation for Russia lies in the fact that Latin American exporting states (except Costa Rica) themselves do not comply with anti-Russian sanctions, which cannot be said about transnational fruit corporations conducting economic activities on their territory.

And here comes the moment of truth. Africa practically does not support sanctions against the Russian Federation, at least regarding fruit exports. Thus, they are interested in cooperation with Moscow, including Afruibana President Joseph Ovon Kono. It is not difficult to guess how the European Union, which remains the main customer of the association, will react to the desire to establish economic contacts with us.


One way or another, for domestic banana lovers the picture is not rosy. The times when, for example, in July-August of this year you could buy a kilo of bananas for 80 rubles at Magnit are gone forever. 1 kg of bananas in the Russian Federation in September cost $1,48, that is, 138 rubles. Most likely, they won’t completely disappear from the shelves tomorrow (in extreme cases, China will help out), but the price... Never mind, we’ll get used to it. In the USSR they managed just fine without bananas and did not suffer much about it.

And finally, for comparison, we present the average cost of certain types of agricultural products in British retail in September 1990 and now.

Bananas, per kg: 101 pence (114 rubles).
Oranges: 21 pence (24 rub.) – 43 pence (49 rub.).
Cucumbers: 60 pence (68 rub.) – 83 pence (94 rub.).
Carrots: 57 pence (64 rub.) – 66 pence (75 rub.).