It is behind a paywall, which I don't have access. The first bit gets the point across though.

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-mag ... e=rss_feed

China wants bananas. Cambodia’s banana workers, exporting mainly to China, are getting sick, blaming the chemicals they use. But no one is listening.

Cambodian banana exports to China have surged in recent years, but reports abound of exploitation and endangerment across Cambodia’s banana farms

When the inhabitants of Trapeang Rung learned in 2017 that a 1,000-hectare banana plantation would be established in their village by Longmate Agriculture and was set to provide hundreds of jobs, there was jubilation, recalls Kem Lot. The 59-year-old was hired by Longmate Agriculture in April 2018.

For the villagers, Longmate’s banana farm represented an opportunity – a rarity in the rural bowels of coastal Kampot province – and Kem Lot, like many of his neighbours in the small farming community, was excited by the prospect of not having to migrate elsewhere in Cambodia to pay off the debts he had taken on.

The prospect of earning US$230 a month for maintaining some 2,000 banana trees struck most as a good deal; some even sold their land to Longmate, which in return, Kem Lot says, promised them “work for life”.

a rarity in the rural bowels of coastal Kampot province

Bowels? Kampot town perhaps.

Sell me your land and you can work for me for life, what a great deal, they weren't exploited were they.

No surprise here. Read on.

Chinese banana plantations bring work and pollution to Laos
Post by CEOCambodiaNews » Wed Oct 16, 2019 12:23 am

This is what is happening in Laos, where the Chinese are renting large parcels of land from the locals to grow bananas. It is providing money and employment, but at a heavy cost to the environment. This could also be Cambodia's future.

the-barnyard/chinese-banana-plantations ... 33139.html

techietraveller84 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 27, 2022 1:02 pm It is behind a paywall, which I don't have access. The first bit gets the point across though.

https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-mag ... e=rss_feed

China wants bananas. Cambodia’s banana workers, exporting mainly to China, are getting sick, blaming the chemicals they use. But no one is listening
Cambodia
Cambodian banana exports to China have surged in recent years, but reports abound of exploitation and endangerment across Cambodia’s banana farms

Gerald Flynn Vutha Srey Thomas Cristofoletti Andy Ball and Roun Ry
Published: 9:15am, 27 Mar, 2022

When the inhabitants of Trapeang Rung learned in 2017 that a 1,000-hectare banana plantation would be established in their village by Longmate Agriculture and was set to provide hundreds of jobs, there was jubilation, recalls Kem Lot. The 59-year-old was hired by Longmate Agriculture in April 2018.

For the villagers, Longmate’s banana farm represented an opportunity – a rarity in the rural bowels of coastal Kampot province – and Kem Lot, like many of his neighbours in the small farming community, was excited by the prospect of not having to migrate elsewhere in Cambodia to pay off the debts he had taken on.

The prospect of earning US$230 a month for maintaining some 2,000 banana trees struck most as a good deal; some even sold their land to Longmate, which in return, Kem Lot says, promised them “work for life”.

“The company grabbed some land,” says Kem Lot, “other parts they bought for US$1,000 per hectare and even though the land was probably worth US$2,000 per hectare at the time, nobody protested – not even the land grabs – because the company promised work.”

The race for land that fuelled Cambodia’s banana boom can be traced back to 2018, when the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries secured export rights to China by agreeing to meet Chinese sanitary and phytosanitary standards. Just five companies, including Longmate, were licensed to do so.

According to the agriculture ministry, Cambodia exported 32,821 tonnes of bananas in 2018, which increased almost fivefold in 2019 to 157,812 tonnes. By 2020, banana exports reached 343,812 tonnes with 16 companies licensed to export to the Chinese market, where demand was said to have reached 12 million tonnes per year.

In 2021, these numbers climbed higher still, with 423,168 tonnes exported. Each year China has been the dominant buyer, purchasing roughly 87 per cent of Cambodia’s banana exports in 2020 and more than 89 per cent in 2021.

But while dazzling dollar values dominated pro-government media coverage of Cambodia’s banana business, workers like Kem Lot felt they were not sharing in the fruits of their labour. Soon after he began working for Longmate, problems emerged.

First, Chinese management was brought into what was originally a Cambodian-run operation sometime in 2019. This, Kem Lot says, coincided with a shift in workers’ quotas – from being responsible for 2,000 trees to 2,500. Salaries were cut to US$180, overtime was scrapped and workers now had to come in on weekends as well. On top of this, the company would no longer provide personal protective equipment (PPE).

As pressure mounted on workers to meet the new quotas, Kem Lot decided to mobilise the community, forming a union to push back against the harsher conditions.

“They [Longmate] didn’t like that, they wanted to suppress our voice and stop us from using our rights,” he says. “Almost all the workers had microfinance loans to pay and the company knew this was our weakness, they knew we would always have to work no matter what the company did.”

In 2020, some 2.8 million microloans were held by 3.6 million Cambodian households, with the average loan worth US$4,280, which rights groups have estimated to be the highest in the world, making workers vulnerable to exploitation.

Kem Lot says that if he didn’t meet the new quotas, his pay was docked and so to keep his head above water, he did what many in Trapeang Rung did in an environment with lax enforcement of child labour laws – he brought his whole family to work at Longmate, but only he and his wife drew salaries.

“There were about 700 workers from the community there and it was common for people to take their families because there was so much work to do,” Kem Lot recalls, “looking after the trees, spraying the pesticides, watering, trimming leaves, spreading fertiliser, harvesting and replanting the baby bananas.”

Workers were incentivised with payments of 200 riel (roughly 0.5 US cents) for every kilogram of bananas harvested, but as Kem Lot explains, it takes between six and seven months to harvest bananas and the company estimated each tree held 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of fruit worth US$1, which should equate to each worker receiving roughly US$2,500 in bonuses each harvest.

But as Chea Kheang, a 53-year-old former Longmate employee explains, “Nobody got that, few even got close to US$1,000.”

Chea Kheang, along with his wife, Srey No, joined Longmate in August 2019, but by April 2020, he became too sick to work, something he says he had never experienced before.

“My job was to spray chemicals on the leaves, the fruit, the stems and the base of the trees. I worked on one zone, which was 2,000 trees back then,” he explains. “It’s so painful to move, I used to be a very active man, but living like this, I’m heartbroken.”

As his illness took hold, Chea Kheang became less able to meet the company’s quotas, even with the help of his wife. They detail how the company deducted from their pay to cover the expense of hiring subcontractors at US$7.50 a day when the pair could no longer maintain the trees across their two zones.

“When my husband got sick, I took over his zone until it was time to harvest, but the company said my bananas couldn’t be sold, so they didn’t pay me – I saw them take my bananas to the warehouse to be prepared [for transport],” says Srey No, who quit as a result.

As de facto union leader, Kem Lot raised the health concerns with Longmate and the Kampot Provincial Department of Labour in 2019 and 2020, but while the company agreed it was a problem, instead of addressing it, they fired Kem Lot in July 2020. The new union, Kem Lot says, doesn’t dare to speak up or protest after Longmate ordered local authorities to monitor key union figures, including Kem Lot, who remains tangentially involved.

“Before the new quotas, they used to give us gloves, boots and masks, but when they made staff pay for these themselves, people stopped using them – it was around this time that the subcontractors were hired,” he says, adding that his salary was docked between US$5 and US$10 if subcontractors were used to help him manage his 2,500-tree zone.
Full article: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-mag ... na-workers

From 2018:

Chinese Firm Invests Over $32M in Banana Farm

Phnom Penh (FN), Aug. 22 - The Council for the Development of Cambodia (CDC) approved a Chinese-owned firm Longmate Agriculture Co Ltd, a joint venture between local, Chinese and Hong Kong investors, to invest in a banana plantation in Chhouk district, Kampot province with a total investment over $32 million.

At the ceremony of the First Drop for Banana on 20 August 2018, Phe Hok Chhoun, the chairman of Board of Longmate Agriculture Co Ltd, said that he decided to invest with the Chinese firm in banana plantation, for his Chinese partner has extensive experience in research and production of bananas. Moreover, Cambodia has a good climate and suitable land for banana plantation.

He strongly believed that with this first large-scale investment in Cambodian banana, it contributed to promoting national growth by provinding jobs to local workers, and reduced poverty and migration.
http://en.freshnewsasia.com/index.php/e ... 27-32.html

Wonder if they they eat them green, as well.

Humans eat more bananas than monkeys, which isn't surprising; I've never known anyone to eat a monkey.

Chinese on the other hand...

Reduce poverty, it did the opposite this reminds me of a doc of Chinese taking over car windscreen production in the states, work harder for less pay for the good of the company was the results. Can't remember the name of the doc someone will.

Both the Chinese companies and local govermental regulation agencies (more so) are to blame for the chemical overuse. As usual, the innocent ppl, both Cambodian workers and Chinese consumers back home, are the victims.