Teapa: Mexico’s Banana land

April 27, 2019

A few weeks ago we travel to the southeast of Mexico very close to Villahermosa city, on the state of Tabasco.

The municipality in particular is called Santiago de Teapa, and is the largest banana producer of the state, having 70% of its territory cultivated of this fruit.

Teapa comes from the word Teapan of the Nahuatl language, whose meaning is “Rio Sobre Piedras” or “Rio de Piedras”, and refers to one of the rivers that cross the city.

The banana plantations are incredible, we found orchards with different sizes and different stages. From planting orchards to orchards being crop. The quality process is very meticulous. From bananas floting and being packed on the hands of many people which on the whole they develope a high quality work with speed and accurecy. The exportation packing and the setting of the reffer container is wonderful accomplishing an incredible quality.

The climate of the region, along with the great amount of water and land properties helps banana to have a incredible exportation quality.

The citizens of the region explained to us that many years ago cacao was planted in this lands. But during the 80´s there where many floads which lead the farmers to lose great part of their crops due the time needed for growing cacao (3 to 4 years). People decided tho change for a more friendly fruit with faster crops reason wht the chose banana (9 months to grow).

Bananas growing started during the 70´s with it´s first tries afterwards growing bananas has been one of the strongest economical activities of the region.

Nowadays Teapa has the biggest efficency per hectare and in 2017 was crowned as the city with the largest production of banana in México. This fruit is being send to the rest of the world mainly to Europe and Asia.