Now named Dole Food Company, Standard Fruit Company was established in 1924 by the Vaccaro Brothers. Its forerunner was started in 1899, when Sicilianimmigrants Joseph, Luca and Felix Vaccaro, together with Salvador D'Antoni, began importing bananas to New Orleans from La Ceiba, Honduras. By 1915 the business had grown so large that it bought most of the ice factories in New Orleans, in order to refrigerate its banana ships, leading to its president Joseph Vaccaro becoming known as the "Ice King".
In 1926 the company changed its name from Standard Fruit Company into the Standard Fruit and Steamship Company. Between 1964 and 1968 the company was acquired by the Castle & Cooke Corporation. Castle & Cooke was renamed Dole Food Company, Inc. in 1991. Castle & Cooke Inc, a real estate company, was spun off in 1995 and now separately listed.
Further Reading
Thomas L. Karnes, "Tropical Enterprise: The Standard Fruit & Steamship Company in Latin America", Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1978
After the turn of the century, The United FruitCompany and the StandardFruit and Steamship Company expanded their control over the rich alluvial plains of Honduras' Atlantic coast.
A second result was that the population of the coastal regions became predominately West Indian, since the U.S. companies preferred to hire English speaking laborers.
In Honduras, as elsewhere in Central America, the banana companies had begun to return some of their lands to the government, but continued to market the bananas grown by small farmers or peasant cooperatives on the returned lands.
The United FruitCompany (1899–1970) was a major American corporation that traded tropical fruit (primarily bananas and pineapples) grown in Third World plantations and sold in the United States and Europe.
Company holdings in Cuba, which included sugar mills in the Oriente region of the island, were expropriated by the 1959 revolutionary government led by Fidel Castro.
The United FruitCompany was frequently denounced by leftist leaders and intellectuals, who accused it of bribing government officials in exchange for preferential treatment, exploiting its workers, contributing little by way of taxes to the countries in which it operated, and working ruthlessly to consolidate monopolies.
Feeds |
Contact