Home > United States > Yes, We have No Bananas?
Yes, We have No Bananas?
By Victoria Morphy, Missouri
In a dash to get to your first class, you grab a banana and eat breakfast on the move. And it's not just you. Most of the world grabs a banana for breakfast. And in many regions in Africa, bananas are not just breakfast - they make up 90% of the diet. While today bananas enjoy universal appeal, people around the world might soon be waking up to this news flash - No More Bananas.
Its true, says Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. Banana trees throughout Asia and Africa are being wiped out by a global blight called Panama disease. This has caused widespread concern amongst plantation owners in Central America who are doing everything in their power to protect their crops.
"Were bananas to be struck from the planet, never to be eaten again, it would be just one more occurrence in the fruit’s long “mind-boggling” history – one that is rooted in one continent that became a factory for the world." -Victoria Morphy
Options to save the banana are slim-pickings, Koeppel says, largely because Panama disease affects the banana plant fundamentally. Panama disease contaminates the soil, rots the plant, turns the leaves brown and ultimately makes it impossible for trees to grow. And because bananas are seedless and therefore don't pollinate, there is little hope for the fruit's survival on its own.
Were bananas to be struck from the planet, never to be eaten again, it would be just one more occurrence in the fruit's long "mind-boggling" history - one that is rooted in one continent that turned into a factory for the world.
United Fruit Company bananas were the first widely imported agricultural product, Koeppel said. "The whole idea that you would have a factory food plantation thousands of miles away from where people bought the fruit in the 1880s was ludicrous. I mean it took an incredible amount of imagination and vision even to think of growing fruit on another continent and shipping it to people around the world - especially a fruit that is as perishable as a banana."
An economic boon for producers like Chiquita, United Fruit Company and Dole, our breakfast staple inadvertently was responsible for bringing down governments and enslaving thousands - leaving an inextinguishable legacy of violence and a catastrophic chain of events in Central America.
Guatemala along with Central American countries became known as banana republics where for over 75 years the banana companies exerted influence over Central American governments. United Fruit, which eventually was bought by the Del Monte brand, transformed the Guatemalan landscape "into factories or more accurately into slave labor factories," Koeppel said. "In order to buy bananas so cheap you needed to sell a lot and in order to sell a lot you had to keep the costs low. So everything good and bad about the banana comes from that stroke of brilliant imagination."
Many people don't know the history of terror unleashed as a result of this stroke of brilliant imagination. Economic windfalls were inextricably tied to the creation of dysfunctional countries.
"It was in the interest [of the banana companies] to have things be as unstable as possible so they could take over the land and change the labor laws so that people would work for cheap wages," Koeppel said. "They created a situation where they could constantly do what they wanted because they were the strongest force in that country for many years and things spiraled out of the control. They turned small undeveloped nations or near nations into insane asylums essentially, which allowed them to run the show economically."
Bananas have also made an indelible mark on the survival of many people in Africa, where it has is intertwined in the cultural and practical ecosystem. In Uganda, for example, not only does the banana comprise 90% of many people's diet, but also the banana tree is essential for survival because the tree's leaves provide shade for other traditional crops to grow. Not only will banana blight cause a pivotal downturn in the continent's economic future it will spawn widespread famine.
Surprisingly, not much attention has been devoted to this issue. "Bananas are not even getting 5% of the totally funding towards anti-hunger research," Koeppel said, "[whereas] wheat, rice and corn get tons of money. So there's a lot more awareness that needs to be advocated and I'm not really sure that it's really happening right now."
And the banana companies don't seem to be doing much to help advance this awareness. Apparently precautions weren't made when the Gros Michel banana (the predecessor to today's conventional Cavendish banana) fell victim to a similar blight. At least prospective plans about the future of the banana have not been discussed.
"I think there's a real problem in terms of these corporate entities because if Dole starts saying bananas are in danger, and they're not doing anything about it, they're technically violating their fiduciary duty to their shareholders," Koeppel said. "If I were at Dole, I would start introducing other bananas. I would slowly infiltrate the Cavendish market with the goal of in 10 years of having five different kinds of bananas on every supermarket food aisle."
The other answer, according to Koeppel, is to investigate the possibility of creating a genetically engineered banana - one that is full of favor, resistant to disease and pests, that can be grown across a wide spectrum of terrain and weather conditions is something Koeppel describes in his book. Developed in Honduras, the Goldfinger banana tastes like a tart apple banana but is resistant to pests, weather temperature variations and is hearty enough for global shipping. Koeppel says consumers may or may not accept it as a substitute. "It's a gamble for the big banana companies," Koeppel said.
In the end, neither banana companies nor consumers may have a clear choice. As Panama disease ravages banana trees around the world even as demand for bananas remains unabated, people may have to compromise. As mind-boggling as its history, a world without bananas is equally mind-boggling. With people's very survival dependent upon its fate while others not accustomed to having breakfast without it - the banana will need to undergo yet another brilliant invention.
