Fresh Del Monte CEO warns of more banana supply chain disruptions 

Fresh Del Monte Produce BB #:111187 Chairman and CEO Mohammad Abu-Ghazaleh said global banana production faces an increasing threat. 

During its third quarter earnings call on October 29, 2025, Abu-Ghazaleh said banana conditions have worsened from this summer with the confirmation of Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4) in Ecuador, one of the world’s largest banana exporters.

TR4 is a soil-borne fungus with no known cure. Additionally, Black Sigatoka is accelerating due to rising temperatures and humidity. Both cut yields and force growers to adopt costly interventions. 

He said small growers in Latin America may not be able to afford the expensive costs of fighting the diseases and may abandon the banana business, which would cause ripple effects in the banana supply chain and end the era of inexpensive bananas. 

The following comments from Abu-Ghazaleh are from the earnings call:  

I’d like to discuss a challenge facing the entire industry. The mounting pressure on global banana production — which I addressed last quarter and has since then only intensified. 

Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 (TR4) was confirmed in Ecuador — one of the world’s largest banana producers — marking a serious escalation in Latin America after previous detections in Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. 

It is a highly contagious, soil-borne disease with no cure, and it is already destabilizing the region. In Peru, where TR4 was first detected in 2021, the impact is noticeable in the Piura region — the country’s leading producer of organic bananas. A recent study found that 45% of farms are already infected, and about 10% have been completely eradicated.  

Small growers are under mounting pressure as Black Sigatoka spreads and TR4 reaches new countries. With already thin margins across the sector, rising disease-control costs are making survival increasingly difficult. 

At Fresh Del Monte, we’ve been preparing for these challenges for years. We’re advancing work on TR4-resistant banana varieties — an essential step toward long-term resilience — but solutions of this scale take time. 

In the meantime, growers — large and small — are taking every possible measure to control these diseases. Each year, these efforts are becoming more demanding as the situation further deteriorates, placing new financial strains on growers across the industry. 

We’re seeing the impact clearly in Costa Rica. As of August 2025, production in the industry has declined 22% year-over-year — which is roughly 18 million boxes lost — with most of that loss stemming directly from Black Sigatoka. For a country long recognized for its agricultural efficiency, that’s a significant and concerning decline — one that inevitably drives costs higher across the industry. 

Demand for bananas remains strong. What’s shifting is the balance between supply and demand — and the underlying economics of the category. Understanding that shift is essential for everyone involved. 

Sustaining this category over the long term will require closer alignment across the value chain, ensuring that pressures in the fields are understood — and shared — throughout the supply chain. The farmer can no longer absorb these rising costs.  

It’s easy to take the banana for granted — simple, familiar, always there. But behind that simplicity lies one of agriculture’s most coordinated and collaborative supply chains. 

Protecting it is our shared responsibility — and if we don’t act collectively to support growers and stabilize this supply chain, we risk seeing this fruit — and the livelihoods behind it — disappear before our eyes. That reality weighs heavily on me and drives much of our focus today.