A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A BANANA GROWER

"Hello, my name's Alan Sellers and my banana plantation is in beautiful, tropical Mission Beach in Far North Queensland.

I wake up pretty early every morning, around 5am, and after I've caught up with the early morning news and had my breakfast, it's time to start looking after my bananas.

Bananas grow all year round. We're busiest during harvest time which is between April and October when I have about 12 workers helping me out, otherwise I can get by with about 5 or 6.

There's always plenty of work to be done on a banana plantation. When we're not harvesting, we're busy spraying for weeds between the rows, fertilising or tying blue plastic covers over the bunches to protect the fruit against wind damage.

As the months get warmer, around July/August/September, we start our replanting. The selected baby banana plants like the dry, warmer weather and it brings on the fruit faster. 9 months later, the bunches are ready for harvesting.

During the harvest season, 2 cutters and a driver go around the plantation cutting down the fruit and stacking them on a trailer, taking great care not to bruise the skins.
We cut the bunches down when they're full sized but still green as bananas are one of those rare fruit that continue ripening once they're picked.

Back at the shed, we hook up the bunches of bananas. We're lucky because today we can use a hydraulic lift whereas a few years ago you had to carry the bunches on your back. Most of them weigh well over 20 kilos! That's the weight of an average bouncy 5 year old boy!

If you look closely you'll notice that bananas grow off the main centre stem in a series of fans. We call these sections, "hands". Each hand has 6 - 15 "fingers."

In the shed, I have one or two "dehanders" who cut off the hands of bananas. Every stalk has about 10 hands, or up to 150 bananas. The hands are put on packing wheels which work like a conveyor belt where they're rinsed in water to wash off any dust or sap.

I have 3 packers who carefully stack the hands of bananas into cartons which each weigh 13 kilos. It takes skilful arranging to get as many hands into a box as possible without the fruit rubbing against each other as they are trucked to the wholesale markets around the country.

(As a point of interest, at the markets, the fruit is put in special ripening rooms filled with ethane gas. This is the same all natural gas given off by rotting vegetables! It helps speed up the ripening process and makes the bananas turn golden yellow. )

By 4.30 it's knock-off time. Unless it's Friday and we finish at 1.30. When it's really busy, we also work Saturdays.

On average most banana plantations produce 1,000 cartons per acre/per year. As my plantation is approximately 55-60 acres, I produce 55,000-60,000 cartons. Or around 4 million bananas every year. What a mouthful!"

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