Bananas Represent Everything That Is Wrong With Our Food System
Ever wonder why bananas are the cheapest fruit in the supermarket? It makes no sense. They're grown thousands of miles away by steely imperialist multinational corporations, and spoil within two weeks. A Times Op-Ed argues that bananas are on their way out, and may disappear entirely from store shelves in the next twenty years.
According to Dan Koppel, bananas are cheap because they are "the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger." Banana producers rely on a single genetic strain, the Cavendish, to guarantee that all bananas in a shipment ripen simultaneously. While this allows producers to enjoy economies of scale that keep our beloved bananas cheap, it also leaves bananas dangerously exposed to the vengeful wiles of genetics:
This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.
By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.
Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.
Quick, banana producers, call the scientists who built the seedless watermelon. They may be our only hope.
Yes, We Will Have No Bananas [NYT]
PREVIOUSLY: Yes, We Have No Bananas!
(Photo: Getty)
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Comments:
Um... please don't go? I heart bananas.
Bananas already doubled in price. I am guessing due to gas prices and grocery stores raising prices everywhere.
"too small to appeal to consumers"
WHAT? How big were the old strain of bananas? Jesus!
The new current bananas seem to be perfect size!
Fairly pointless article. Bananas have flourished because they are quick and easy to eat without additional washing or preparation, contain lots of nutrients and enough sugar for a quick energy boost and are very versatile (they can be used for anything from banana bread to dried banana chips to plain old raw goodness). The time to spoilage really means nothing if you're an intelligent enough shopper to take that into account (or eat enough of them so it doesn't matter).
If, and that's a fairly large if, disease took out certain crops of the fruit, another crop or variety would be created to resist that disease. It's too big an industry for this not to happen. Whatever the history, consumers (worldwide, not just the US) are too accustomed to eating the fruit for it to disappear completely.
Of course, tastes may change over the years to make it less of a staple, but that happens with most foods anyway over a long enough period of time.
You can't convince me that in 20 years my local grocery store will stop selling them.
@bohemian: Our grocery store had a sign stating that bananas doubled in price due to an unusually rainy season in the growing areas.
Well, if there is a disease that wipes out bananas, and it's mutated to a form that kills the bananas we eat today, and once a field is affected, you can not grow bananas there again, where is the opinion in this article. Isn't it more of a fact?
Also, a vegetable or fruit that succumbs to a disease is something wrong? Then does the potato also represent everything wrong with our food system? I'm confused.
What a bummer... With all those petabytes of data in the scientist's disposal, they'd better find a solution.
Next is the pineapple.
All I can picture is an (extinct) Giant Lemur eating a Giant Gros Michel banana. Lemurs are awesome. Have you ever seen them? They can only jump and skip, they can't walk. So cute!
As long as they continue to look like a schlong, they will always be available. It's all about demand.
Great source of potassium, fiber and energy. 33% of daily vitamin C and 41% daily vit. B6 in 8oz. worth. See [tinyurl.com]
@snoop-blog: I got a definite bias vibe from Mr. Koppel's article (which is fine, because it's an OP-ED, not a news story) but I think he hopes to convince us to stop buying bananas.
@aphexbr: Did you bother reading the article? NEW VIRULENT strain.
And, despite what CSI: Produce Isle shows, it's *tough* to create a new plant to arbitrary specs. As far as genetics go, we're children slapping together mud patties.
Nature is really, REALLY complicated and interrelated. That's what is so troubling about our current model: we're pygmies. Monocrops are especially problematic since they push out other varieties, which leave us FAR more vulnerable when, inevitably, nature adopts and "balances" things out. By then we've lost the other strains that weren't vulnerable. Or we've turned a local, easily-mitigated problem into a global fruity apocalypse.
That's a key concern about GMO: we really have little appreciation for these processes that have run the planet a thousand times longer than we've existed. Simply slap something together, throw it out in the fields and pray it doesn't crash the ecosystem.
If the bananas go, what will we use in our Safer Sex classes? The Horror!!
What's this double in price thing? We used to have bananas for 69c a lb, now its 89c and 99c a lb.
Yeah, occasionally they'd be on sale for 49c but I don't see the current price as double if you have to count the sale price.
Geoff in Seattle
PORQUE?!??!?!??!
@Tightlines:
Don't forget the honey!
I love bananas too, but it realy isn't very responsible for Americans to be eating them. The energy necessary to get a banana to our supermarkets is ludicrous. But I sure owuld miss them....
In panama we have Chiquita (export only, for sale here) and smaller growers. We also occasionally have small 2 inch bananas that are very good tasting. They do not seem to be commercially grown but are a nice treat. Large bananas $.05 ea, pineapples $.50 small, $1.00 large. Of course, gas ranges from $4.80 in the cities to $6 to $8 in the hard to reach villages.
@aphexbr: The problem is that there isn't anything even remotely close to a Cavendish banana that could replace it. It's not a matter of switching varieties like say from a Granny Smith apple to a Mcintosh one. The genetic diversity of bananas grown worldwide is almost zero. Thus their succeptability to this new strain of fungus. Containment efforts were only partially successful, recently several hurricanes and typhoons basically wiped out all of these efforts an decimated entire regions.
@aphexbr:
Couldn't have put it better myself. Typical of the Times to send out another gloom-and-doom article to scare people into thinking something will go extinct or something will kill us. *yawn*
@Trai_Dep: The problem isn't making a banana that's resistant to the fungus, this has in fact already been done. The problem is that the resultant banana has a problem with some combination of the following: taste, time for ripeness, toughness to bruising, appearance.
Thus if the Cavendish banana is in fact wiped out, we will probably have to settle for another sub banana that probably bruises very easily or looks a tad more green than we're used to.
cant they find some old seeds of the old variety & attempt to get them going again? I understand seeds can last for years & years dormant. In fact...I recently read an article where they managed to get a 2000 year old date seed to grow into a plant.
The solution: Plantains!
Mmmmm....
The health benefits of bananas
Hopefully they don't go away. I love to just be able to grab a banana before bringing my dog for a walk or bringing one to work and eating it about 30 mins before I go workout.
I love bananas, I'd take one over burger almost anytime.
Good riddance. Bananas are groadie.
Start getting used to plantains. They're the close cousin of bananas.
Definitely not good news for Banana Man!
People have a love/hate relationship with the advanced horticultural practices which could help alleviate this problem. In a college course about 9 years ago we were given the option to taste one many different engineered crops - some through advanced cross-breeding, others through genetic modification, some through radiation-based forced mutation, and still others from natural mutations which have been preserved through careful propagation techniques. The professor pointed out that many people were disgusted and off-put by the idea of GMO foods, but when put to the question, they could not identify which foods they were uncomfortable with or say why. Read up on the history of the red grapefruit, for example.
Trai_Dep is of course correct that we have a long way to go when it comes to plant genetics, but I for one am pretty confident that the banana producers will use whatever horticultural methods available to them to prevent their ruin - and those methods are not limited to direct genetic manipulation.
the problem with the piece is its a bunch of bullshit. Yes the old Gros Michel strain had a blight problem but its not even remotely extinct, its commercially unlivable (because of the blight) thus the TRUE reason behind why they are not growing it anymore. They COULD grow it in mass quantities but unlike our current banana, where you could guarantee a large crop, you can not with the Gros Michel anymore. While this IS a problem with our food system, its completely different from the fear-mongering this jackass is going about causing.
All it means is bananas are going to be expensive and we wont get as
many of them, which in turn might produce a switch back to the Gros
Michel since they might then become viable again. Also scientists
have been genetically engineering a blight proof Michel strain for a
while now, so its very likely one will be developed before long.
@satoru: Yup, that's my point. It's HARD. Goes without saying that the fruity solution has to, you know, sell.
it would be nice to know what has made our Cavendish species susceptible to this virus. Genetic modification? If so that would mean that we eliminated a link in our precious food chain. Bad news, especially for Banana Man
I thought our bananas were essentially seedless now and that they all come from cuttings of a previous plant, so that they are all in essence from a common plant way back when. Don't quote me on it....
@OletheaEurystheus: It's the produce version of the "blondes will be extinct in 200 years!!" urban legend.
But I like bananas... Please stop telling me the food I enjoy is "dangerous." Ignorance is tasty, tasty bliss.
I love all the conservative idiots attempting to use economics, supply and demand, and the free market to dismiss the biological fact that our current banana supply is going to disappear in a few years.
The Cavendish is dying and no amount of demand will bring it back. The same thing is true with the Gros Michel. Economics can't work without a product. Free markets can't solve everything.
This argument always makes me facepalm. Really do they NOT know what non HUMAN made bananas look like? They are round/lumpy/any shape with tough skins. The current Bananas have been made that way over decades of human selection.
So they are really debating the genius of man in the face of god's inadequate design? Very interesting......
What about the apple bananas from here in Hawaii? What will become of them?
All I know is that the kid in the above picture would look awfully goofy hoisting two pomegranates over his head...
Mmm, peanut butter and banana sandwiches....