Banana growers across Latin America are calling for better pay to help them cope with the climate crisis, as extreme weather linked to this year's super El Niño event cuts production and threatens their livelihoods.

High winds in parts of Colombia, one of the biggest suppliers to the UK market, and heavy rainfall in Peru and Ecuador are already affecting production, according to the Fairtrade Foundation. In the Dominican Republic, farmers are expected to face drought, with forecasts of drier and warmer than usual conditions.

Fairtrade research suggests that during the previous El Niño cycle, productivity across its farmers and workers dropped by 13% in the Dominican Republic, 22% in Ecuador and 6% in Peru compared with the year before. Dr Carley-Jane Stanton, a climate and environment lead at Fairtrade, said this El Niño was expected to bring more extreme weather, including heavy rainfall and strong winds, and that the impacts for producers were expected to be more severe than in the 2023-24 cycle.

Harvests already hit

Exports from the Colombian Caribbean region fell 32% to $122 million between July and September this year, according to the Association of Banana Growers of Magdalena and La Guajira, as reported by the trade publication Fruitnet. In September alone, shipments were down 42% year on year, with earnings close to halving to $40 million from $70 million.

The association said climate-related productivity losses and a decline in export earnings, made worse by currency issues, were undermining the economic sustainability of the industry. It called on international markets to foster commercial conditions that recognise actual production costs and contribute to the sector's sustainability.

Ever Antonio Flores Muños, a worker at the Agrosiete banana producer in Colombia, told Fairtrade: “Over the past 10 years the climate has changed a lot. It's been getting much hotter. Some places have had losses due to the climate, flooding, strong winds. It's going to affect all of us – our workers, colleagues – everything will be at great risk, and our wages will decrease.”

Fair prices and climate resilience

Fairtrade is calling for legislation in the UK to tackle unfair trading practices, such as low or late payments to farmers and contracts that push risk down the supply chain, so producers can invest more in improving their crops' resilience to severe weather and the greater likelihood of pests and diseases. Its chief executive, Eleanor Harrison, said the UK's banana supply depended on the people growing bananas having the resources they needed to adapt to climate change and invest in their future, and that fair prices, climate resilience and decent work went hand in hand.

Research by the Ethical Trading Initiative found that prices paid to suppliers in 2026 did not even cover basic production costs for 66.7% of them. While bananas are becoming harder and more expensive to produce, supermarket prices have remained unchanged for almost 40 years despite rising costs for fertiliser, fuel and labour. Some businesses, including Sainsbury's, the Co-op and Waitrose, have taken voluntary steps by sourcing only Fairtrade bananas, which guarantee a minimum price, but Fairtrade says there is more work to do.

Caoimhe Buckley, chief corporate affairs officer at the large supplier Fyffes, said the long-term sustainability of the banana sector could not be separated from purchasing practices, and that the supermarket price of bananas needed to recognise the real and sustainable cost of production, including labour and decent wages, environmental management, human-rights due diligence and the investment needed to adapt to climate change.

The threat is not new, but it is growing. The El Niño event in 1983, one of the strongest ever recorded, affected 15% of the total planted banana area in Ecuador, with exports falling 36%. Research for the Inter-American Development Bank published in 2020 found that suitable land for banana cultivation could shrink by an average of 61% across Latin America and the Caribbean by 2050 if producers cannot adapt.