Extract: The petroleum bonanza that transformed Ecuador's economy after 1970 increased per capita income and funded agricultural development. Higher incomes increased demand for foods which had to be filled by imports, most of which came from the United States. The United States was the major market for expanding agricultural exports. Production of export-oriented crops--cocoa, bananas, and coffee--was stimulated by high world prices and government renovation policies. Imported breeding cattle and growth of a poultry industry sharply increased livestock production. Projects were begun to irrigate the large areas in the coastal plain in the eighties.

Globalized Fruit, Local Entrepreneurs focuses on the role played by local growers and exporters in Ecuador, which has been the world's leading banana exporter for more than sixty years without ever being dominated by foreign corporations.