Banana plantations suffer storm flooding

Banana grower and marketer Chiquita has said that the recent Tropical Storm Gamma caused severe flooding to banana farms in Honduras. The company said that around 1,600 hectares of its own farms and more than 500 hectares of farms of independent growers had been affected. Some of the worst hit areas could be out of production for more than a year, and Chiquita has predicted some shortages on the American market in the first quarter of 2006.