Bananas, Coffee and the Export Crops

Agricultural region

Ecuador became the world’s largest BANANA exporter from the 1950s, after Panama disease wrecked the Central American plantations, and remains among the leaders — a crop that reorganised the coastal provinces of El Oro, Los Ríos and Guayas, and whose labour conditions have been repeatedly documented and criticised. COFFEE grows in Loja, Manabí, El Oro and Galápagos, both arabica and robusta, at a smaller scale and with a specialty revival. Also: sugarcane and its PANELA, rice in the Guayas basin, African oil palm, and the cut-flower industry of Cayambe and Pichincha which is agriculture but not food.