Jamaican Harvest (1938)

it is January in Jamaica and at this time of year it is common to see a native Plowman with his picturesque team of oxen plowing these great fields ready for the planting of new bananas State the soil is rich and deep after plowing it is shattered by this tractor then it will lie fallow for a couple of months in the first week in March the ploughman will be out once more to plow and cross plow the fields after the small banana shoots have been planted these laborers mostly women keep the rows of small plants free from weeds by constantly hoeing the earth random it is hard work in the broiling tropical heat as you can see but in Jamaica they may have long droughts and so the banana plantations had to be irrigated the river therefore have dams constructed across them so that reservoirs can be made the waters are led through these streams and channels to ditches beside the plantation here the water is diverted into smaller ditches between each row of trees and every five or six days the water is allowed to flood the field to a depth of several inches when the water has soaked in the earth is once again headed to remove all weeds and also to aerate the soil here a new chute known as a sucker can be seen growing beside a four year old tree regular pruning takes place until the following April all weeds and useless foliage being cut away from the base the banana tree there's a beautiful flower a blossom bananas incidentally grow over there points to the sky and the tree only produces one stem of fruit when the fruit is ready to be harvested a cutter makes one or two disc cuts in the trunk and the whole top of the plant slowly fold over for spins as these huge branches are called a skillfully caught to prevent the fruit from being bruised for rust treatment makes the bananas unfit to travel over the scene they are green when cut down and ripen during the voyage they are then carried to a clearing on the plantation where bullock-carts wait to take them to the railhead these stems are very heavy and usually weigh anything between 80 to 100 pounds this checker can tell at a glance for quality of a stem and intercept in his book this man is called a sniffer and his job is to cut off the ends of the stems as they pass by the bananas are now loaded onto the bullock wagon and once again great care has to be taken during the loading not to bruise the fruit the packing that you can see on the sides of the wagon is all the waste leaves that have been saved and is known as trash from the plantations the bananas are transported to the railways there they are loaded into huge boxcars the stems are checked again during the loading the scene at the docks is one of continual movement as a ceaseless procession of native laborers carries the fruit from sheds to the ship on arrival the bananas have first to pass through the shed past another check where they are finally trimmed then out to the key side where the ship is waiting to the casual eye everything seems confusion but beneath this seeming chaos lies a plan of order almost military in its precision the bananas are then carried past a Labour checking machine finally they are loaded straight into the holes of the ship the holes have to be specially cooled and insulated to preserve the fruit on its long journey to England and all parts of the world the loading goes on day and night at a terrific speed as time is money and the ship must leave in the shortest possible time thus millions of bananas are shipped overseas every year to England and the world you