While bananas are exported from Mindanao under
global brands such as Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita and Sumitomo
these companies act, in the main, only as buyers. The vast majority
of export bananas are produced under license to multinational fruit
companies on plantations operating under one of two basic structures:
(1) grower cooperatives comprising small farmers granted
land under either the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program
(CARP) or the Indigenous Peoples Rights Act (IPRA); and (2) agribusiness
plantations operated by mostly Filipino companies. In the
latter case, much of the land under the control of commercial
plantation operators is leased from agrarian reform beneficiaries
and indigenous peoples. This is taken up again below in Section 4.4.