Editing United Fruit Company (section)

===Social welfare programs for employees of United Fruit Company===
U.S. food corporations, such as United Fruit established community services and facilitates for mass headquartered (production) divisions, settlements of banana plantations throughout their partnered host countries such in the Honduran cities of Puerto Cortes, [[El Progreso]], La Ceiba, [[San Pedro Sula]], Tela, and Trujillo.{{citation needed|date=November 2020}}) Because of the strong likelihood of these communities being in extremely isolated rural agricultural areas, both American and Honduran workers were offered on-site community services similar to those found in other [[company towns]], such as free, furnished housing (similar to barracks) for workers and their immediate family members, health care via hospitals/clinics/health units, education (2–6 years) for children/younger dependents/ other laborers, commissaries (grocery/retail), religious (United Fruit built on-site churches) and social activities, agricultural training at the [[Zamorano]] Pan-American Agricultural School, and cultural contributions such as the restoration of the Mayan city [[Zaculeu]] in Guatemala.<ref name=":24"/>

According to a 2022 study in ''[[Econometrica]]'', the UFCo had a positive and persistent effect on living standards in Costa Rica, which had granted substantial land concessions to the company from 1899 to 1984. The reason is that the company invested heavily in local amenities, such as education and health care, in order to attract and maintain a sizable workforce.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Méndez |first1=Esteban |last2=Van Patten |first2=Diana |date=2022 |title=Multinationals, Monopsony, and Local Development: Evidence From the United Fruit Company |url=https://www.econometricsociety.org/doi/10.3982/ECTA19514 |journal=Econometrica |language=en |volume=90 |issue=6 |pages=2685–2721 |doi=10.3982/ECTA19514 |s2cid=253544863 |issn=0012-9682}}</ref>

====Agriculture research and training====
[[File:Agriculture and trade of Honduras (IA agriculturetrade33coyn).pdf|thumb|upright=0.95|Early 20th-century Honduras agricultural brochure]]
Samuel Zemurray employed agronomists, botanists, and horticulturists to aid in research studies for United Fruit in their time of crisis, as early as 1915, when the [[Panama disease]] first inhabited crops. Funding specialized studies to treat Panama disease and supporting the publishing of such findings throughout the 1920s–1930s, Zemurray consistently was an advocate for agricultural research and education. This was first observed when Zemurray funded the first research station of Lancetilla in Tela, Honduras in 1926 and led by Dr. [[Wilson Popenoe]].

Zemurray also founded the [[Zamorano]] Pan-American Agricultural School (Escuela Agricola Panamericana) in 1941 with Dr. Popenoe as the head [[agronomist]]. There were certain requirements before a student could be accepted into the fully paid for 3-year program including additional expenses (room and board, clothing, food, stc), a few being a male between the ages of 18 and 21, 6 years of elementary education, plus an additional 2 years of secondary.<ref name=":24"/> Zemurray, established a policy where, "The School is not for the training or improvement of the company's own personnel, but represents an outright and disinterested contribution to the improvement of agriculture in Spanish America...This was one way in which the United Fruit Company undertook to discharge its obligation of social responsibility in those countries in which it operates-and even to help others."<ref name=":24"/> Zemurray was so intensely adamant in his policy, that students were not allowed to become employees at the United Fruit Company post-graduation.