The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Hyacinthe Dossavi is an ABSSA inspector. Wearing boots, he makes his way through a field of Sugarloaf pineapples, which are also grown in West Africa, and takes samples for testing at the agency’s laboratory in Cotonou.
The crop was treated eight days ago. Normally, that should mean the ethephon has disappeared.
“If it’s below normal levels, we’ll allow the crop to be cut. If not, it’ll have to wait for a bit,” said Dossavi.
The exporters took some convincing. They play for high stakes with the perishable commodity: wait too long and the fruit risks being too ripe and impossible to sell.
It will then be sold on the local market but at a lower price.
– Bad habits –
For Ernest Ahokpe, who owns the field tested, it’s the price to pay.
“Europeans want coloured pineapples. We have to adapt because our competitors are doing it,” he said.
And those competitors are legion: Ghana, Cameroon, Ivory Coast and especially Costa Rica, the world’s number one exporter.
Before the voluntary ban, Benin had only five percent of the European pineapple market. In 2000, the country exported 500 tonnes of the fruit; in 2014, that had jumped to 4,000 tonnes.
As a result of the new regulations, only about 100 tonnes are expected to be exported this year — and then only untreated Sugarloaf pineapples.
They will still only be a marginal product at European supermarkets.
“My client told me it’s not a seller. White people buy based on the colour of the skin before the taste,” said pineapple grower Andre Dangbe, who has been exporting for three years.
“Here we like (pineapples) green. It’s how they’re meant to be and is sweet like that.”
At the offices of her company that exports pineapples to France for use in bottled fruit juice, agricultural engineer Bertille Guedegbe Marcos said the answer is better communication about Benin’s Sugarloaf pineapples.
“Europeans impose their habits on us but they’re bad ones,” she said.
