Subcontracting is referred to as industrial restructuring, apparently a result of "globalisation and need for flexibilising and specialising in increasingly sophisticated and fragmented consumer markets".. we're talking fucking bananas here!

In the 1990s the U.S.-owned Del Monte Fresh Fruit and Produce and its Guatemalan Subsidiary, BANDEGUA, began restructuring their banana production operations. Instead of directly controlling production, as it had for the past 50 years, they began to outsource production to independent producers who rent the companies' land, plantations, and facilities. Such was the case in a number of plantations in Guatemala's Izabal Province, where Del Monte/BANDEGUA now subcontracts land and banana production to multiple small, local subcontractors.

According to Annie Bird, codirector of Rights Action, a development and human rights organization, "this makes production a lot cheaper, because it makes union organizing virtually impossible."

These shifts have been devastating for Guatemala's subsistence farmers. In February this year, the UN warned that 73,000 Guatemalan children could die from malnutrition in coming months because of low prices for coffee and a drought that killed corn and bean crops across Central America. In the country's eastern region of Camotan, more than 100 people, including children, have died of starvation and related illnesses this year. Dorte Ellehammer, head of the UN World Food Programme in Guatemala, said that farmers who traditionally migrated from their small plots to seek jobs harvesting at plantations were either unable to find work, or were finding wages too low to justify the trip.