Dole revealed a shape of things to come in the food market - Transparency! - by allowing customers to see where their bananas come from.

Visit its Dole Organic web site and punch in the number on your banana SKU sticker. (Not the SKU code, which is 94011 for organic bananas but a three-number code that identifies the farm.) The web site shows you where this code is located.

I ran to my bananas downstairs and found the code and punched it into the web site.

Here's what I found.

DOLE PRODUCER CODE: 759 Farm Name: MarPlantis, S.A.

MarPlantis is formed by three farms, Colon, San Vicente and Matanegro. The three farms are located in Balao, El Oro, 3 hours away from Guayaquil. MarPlantis is the newest organic banana supplier for Dole Ecuador. It was first certified in 2005.
The Molina family is the owner of MarPlantis They are organic certified under EU and USDA NOP Rules.

While it showed pictures of the family - I presume they were the family - it didn't tell me much about them. Obviously that's the next step.

This reflects the entire direction the food system is moving in, toward more transparency. It's a good first step, as far as organic certifications go, but I'd like to see more, say, about worker conditions.