[Sca-cooks] bananas
Margaret Rendell
m_rendell at optusnet.com.au
Tue Jul 20 16:55:22 PDT 2010
Claire Clarke wrote:
> Message: 5
> Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 08:36:43 -0500
> From: "Terry Decker" <t.d.decker at att.net>
> To: "Cooks within the SCA" <sca-cooks at lists.ansteorra.org>
> Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] bananas
> Message-ID: <14AB2DD551E04937A7F720772BB03BEB at TerryPC>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
> reply-type=original
>
>
> The current price on bananas in Oklahoma is .49 USD per avoirdupois pound
> (or $1.08 per kilogram). That is approximately .56 AUD per avoirdupois
> pound or 1.23 AUD per kilogram. Given that Oklahoma is a landlocked state
> with a seaport, the price is likely to be a good working number for bananas
> in the US (cheaper on the coasts, higher in the central plains and Rocky
> Mountain west. So how do actual prices compare between Oklahoma and
> Australia?
>
> Stefan's formula is the one used by the fruit growers to wring fabulous
> profits out of the banana trade, but it neglects cost/value of refrigerated
> transport and distance to market. Refrigerated transport minimizes
> spoilage, essentially eliminating the primary cost of shipping. Bulk
> shipping reduces the cost of refrigeration and transportation. Distance to
> market determines the overall cost of the shipping.
>
> Given the controlled economy in bananas and the shorter shipping distance, I
>
> expect prices in Oz will be a little higher than in the US, but not
> outrageous (if it were, the government protection would likely disappear).
No, we're pretty serious about maintaining our quarantine on a lot of
things. Which is why we have no rabies, no fire blight, no etc etc...
My impression is that bananas here are about twice the US price - and
that's happened over my (40-something year) lifetime, they used to be
much more expensive than that for most of the year.
I remember as a child reading a US children's book ("Mitch and Amy" if
anyone's interested ;) where the mother says to Mitch "I think you run
on bananas the way a car does on gasoline" and he ate several throughout
the course of the book, and I assumed from that that the family must be
rich - bananas were a buyable price for a month or so of the year, but
mostly they were an occasional expensive treat.
Margaret (Melbourne, (not the banana growing part of) Australia)
/Emma (Krae Glas, Lochac)
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