Eating Tropical Fruit at the Source

Yesterday, whilst travelling from Bolgatanga, a town which has fewer quality fruits than my refrigerator, to Accra, I was in absolute awe when we arrived in the Brong-Ahafo Region some four hours into our journey. Green landscape was everywhere. And so were the smallholders, lining the streets with their mangoes, tomatoes, citrus, onions and mushrooms, hoping to attract the cars whistling by. Like hundreds of others, we were lured by the colourful baskets, and stopped to get some mangoes, pineapples and oranges. They were some of the most delicious I’ve had, fresh from the hands of the growers.

This got me thinking about a lot of things, however. Nowhere in the UK, and perhaps Europe, could you find fruit of this quality. In fact, the fruit you see at Tesco, Sainsbury or my local, Asda, does not even look the same: the oranges I avoid eating are orange whereas the ones I had yesterday were a natural green; the pineapples available at Tesco are bigger than my head and an unnatural orange colour, whereas the one I had yesterday was diminutive, yellow and sweet; and the mangoes I ate looked like nothing I’d ever seen before, a nice orange colour, unlike the green, rock-hard stuff supposedly imported from Brazil. This wonderful experience got me thinking about both the western consumer and the smallholder producers of these goods: they are both missing out – big time. The latter – let’s face it – has no market for his produce. His market is the roadside adjacent to his farm. He needs to attract cars in order to eat and feed his family. The former doesn’t even get a sniff of this produce. They are forced to eat the fruit harvested and packed by the Dole’s of the world. Even the fruit we are told is ‘Fair Trade’, collected straight from the producers, seems like a replica of these disgusting species: oversized oranges with zero flavour, and massive bananas which I couldn’t locate in anywhere in Ghana even if I tried (though the ‘Fair Trade’ bananas I saw at Spar a couple of months ago had the label ‘product of Ghana’ on them).

This is why I only eat tropical fruit at the source.