Where do the pineapples you eat come from? Some of you quickly answer, "the can." Thanks, genius. If you eat processed pineapple products such as canned pineapples or pineapple juice, its likely you've eaten a product of Indonesia. Indonesia is the home of the 39,000 hectare (nearly 100,000 acre) Great Giant Pineapple Company, the supplier of 15% of the world's pineapples and the largest pineapple farm in the world. I recently made a trip to south Sumatra to visit this farm.
Where do these pineapples grow? Some of you quickly answer, "on pineapple trees." Wrong. Pineapples grow out of the top of a grassy,
shrub-like plant that gets about waist-tall. The pineapples emerge out of the top and are
pickable after about a year's growth. After one pineapple is picked, the plant will produce a second and smaller pineapple. After two fruits the plant is chopped up and new "tops" are planted.
Pineapples don't grow from seeds, put rather from "tops." Tops are harvested from the top of the pineapple fruit and then placed back into the ground, where they grow and produce new pineapple plants.
Pineapples are harvested using a large, two-winged contraption. Laborers walk along picking the fruits and placing them on the wings' conveyor belts. The conveyor belts carry the fruits into trucks.
Time for a middle-of-the-day nap. Two-layer thick clothing (pineapple leaves are sharp) adds to the already overbearing heat. The Great Giant Pineapple Factory has more than 15,000 employees and harvests more than 2,000 tons of pineapples every day, all year long.
The "tops" are unloaded and will be reused for the next plantings.
I almost felt like I was in Kansas when I saw this scene. It's very rare to see tractors in Indonesia. Almost all farm labor here is done by muscle-power or water buffalo.
This factory at the center of the farm produces canned pineapple and pineapple juice. When the product leaves the factory its still unbranded, but is then bought up and labeled by brands like Dole, Del Monte, and others, and then shipped to countries like the USA. From this factory in the center of the farm, you can drive 20 miles one
direction and see nothing by pineapple fields, and drive for 20 miles in the other direction and only see pineapple fields. Thinking about how big it is almost makes you go fruity.
These are panoramas in opposite directions as I stood on a hill in Lampung, a city I recently visited in Southern Sumatra. Notice the classic red-tiled roof tops that are common throughout Indonesia. The red comes from the natural color of the clay used to make the tiles. Notice also that there are mountains in one direction (above) and the ocean in the other (below), a common scene in this archipelago of 17000 islands.
When Indonesians hear that I'm from Kansas, two things pop into their mind. No, they don't thing about the yellow brick road and Wildcats football/Royals baseball/Chiefs football. Instead they think of cowboys and cigarettes. "Kansas" brand cigarettes are one of the most popular here, and their advertisements are similar to Marlboro's - cowboys riding horses across the open plains as the sun sets in the background, ruining the fresh, clean air with a smoking cigarette hanging out of their mouth.
When Indonesians hear that I own cattle and had childhood dreams of being a cowboy, their idyllic image of Kansas is further confirmed. I do, however, try to point them straight by explaining that we have no Kansas-brand cigarettes in Kansas, nor do we grow much if any tobacco. Their quizzical look reveals feelings of betrayal that Kansas is not as picturesque as they had first imagined. Not wanting to disappoint, I quickly explain that two of my uncles are cowboys and my dad wears cowboy boots and has used a lasso. The smile returns -Kansas isn't much different than they had first imagined.