Wow, four pounds for a penny? That is cheap!
To the OP’s comparison between bananas and the mail, I suspect that the primary cost of sending a letter to Brazil (or wherever) is not the shipping of the letter, but the sorting. It doesn’t matter which specific banana reaches which specific buyer, but it does matter for letters.
I wouldn’t trust a source that claims kiwifruit comes from New Zealand. Kiwifruit are grown right here in the US.
According to UN figures quoted in wiki, the world’s largest producer is Italy, producing nearly twice as much as New Zealand:
By those figures about 2% of the world’s kiwi fruit is grown in the US. I doubt that that meets US demand.
Really? I don’t think kiwifruit is very popular here, besides which, it would certainly put an upper bound on price. I remember when kiwifruit was quite expensive. I still don’t see it the large bin on the shelf very often. It’s usually in a small bin next to the plantains.
Indeed. The last time I was in New Zealand, I was taken aback by the bowl of kiwis on the table in my B&B, each one with a little sticker that said, “Grown in California.”
But you can’t compare apples and oranges. And now you’re throwing bananas into it. 
Yeah, but < 2% isn’t very much of the world’s production. I find it surprising that Italy is the world’s largest producer (0.48 million metric tons/yr compared to 0.28 for New Zealand). Does the US consume > 0.02 million metric tons of kiwi fruit per year? Plus, some of it is exported. That’s only about 0.15 pound per capita, minus exports. And although not terrifically common, you DO have kiwi fruit being used as a flavoring as well as being sold fresh. For comparison, US per capita banana consumption is on the order of 30 pounds per year.
Given the seasonal nature of fresh fruit, the fact that we get it year around, and the sort of global shipping economics we’ve been discussing, you will get fruit shipped around the world to areas where it is also locally grown. Hence, CA kiwi fruit in New Zealand. I’m in CA. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Chilean or New Zealand kiwi fruit in Safeway. Much to the despair of “eat local” movements.
Think about that… somehow, although they lose money on each banana, they somehow make money by selling a lot of them at a loss.
What they likely do is sell them slightly above cost, and then through volume, make a significant amount of money. This is likely because if they priced bananas higher, people would turn to cheaper substitutes like apples, pears, peaches, etc…
Many are shipped from Central America, not South America anyway, so it’s probably a relatively quick trip up through the Gulf into Houston, or up the Pacific coast to Los Angeles. Or across into Miami… either way, Central America’s not that far in shipping terms.
I have to wonder whether bananas, like some other staples, are loss leaders.
When you go to the grocery to pick up bananas, in all liklihood, you will pick up several items that the store is making considerable profit on. Cold cereal is the first thing that comes to mind, followed by quick lunch stuff from the deli or Lunchables. The store may be losing money on the bananas or not making a very high margin, but the things that you buy with them more than make up for it.
I fear you may have been whooshed, sounds like a Milo Mindbender quote from Catch 22 to me…
Of course, Milo was able to get away with it because he was buying them from himself, through a complicated tangle of intermediaries.
No worries! I know that the old “tarantula in the bananas” story is quite snopesworthy. At the same time, given the high incidence of arachnophobia among posters here, I thought it would be good for a laugh.
I heard a rumor that we actually don’t have any bananas. Is this true?
Just today.
Yeah? Well, is that a banana in your pocket or are you just glad to…aw, skip it! 
Yes, we have no bananas!
Somebody had to say it.
Yes, but what about the US consumption? I’ll bet it’s pretty low. I get them once or twice a year and I’m married to a kiwi. I just don’t see good ones in the store very often. Usually it is just a tiny bin of ten that look over ripe and over priced.
This shouldn’t be that surprising. It’s not like kiwifruit is native to New Zealand. It’s native to southeast Asia. Lately New Zealand has been growing a lot of yellow flesh kiwifruit hybrids. I’m not real keen on those, because they’ve lost their zing.
Importing concentrated flavoring is much more economical, besides it can be saved in the off season. It’s also doubtful that products using kiwifruit flavoring actually use much more than is necessary to get it on the label.
That’s a lot of bananas, but I see banana’s in lots of things. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find that US consumption of kiwifruit was less than 1% of that. Kiwifruit may be used like strawberries on the coast, but I can’t remember the last time anyone has served kiwifruit here in the midwest.
I have no doubt that some kiwifruit is imported from New Zealand, but it is more expensive when it is. The price on kiwifruit varies considerably. The point is that the site athelas had quoted made a pretty bad assumption about where kiwifruit come from. They damned well can be local, and certainly most of them do not come from New Zealand.
OK, I found some figures concerning US kiwi fruit consumption. The US is a net importer, and consumption was 0.57 lbs per capita in 2000, 72% of which was imported:
http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.org/landingpage.cfm?article=ca.v058n03p169&fulltext=yes
That article is from 2004. The wiki production figures are more recent, and still way shy of 0.57 lbs/yr. Unless consumption has drastically gone down, the US is still a net importer.
dang… with all dem spiders a wanderin around yonder there…and only noosed a one? 
yes, I would have been disappointed if my setup had been ignored.