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Bye Bye Bananas — the Return of Panama Disease
Ant sends in a disturbing report in The Scientist on an imminent threat to worldwide banana production. "The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one — known as the Gros Michel — was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct. Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies — Chiquita and Dole — because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease... [Now] Panama disease — or Fusarium wilt of banana — is back, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, which appeared two decades ago in Malaysia, spread slowly at first, but is now moving at a geometrically quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas, the primary source of nutrition for millions..."
but it is also solved by genetic variation. the story is a little hysterical, as african varieties are also genetically different enough to resist the new cavendish-hungry fungus. not that the african varieties can't be attacked, but the emphasis is on african VARIETIES: more genetic variation means more resistance to the weakness of monoculture
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This story pops up every 6 months or so (I guess not here, but in general)... Has no one else heard about this banana scare story about 10 times before?? There's even a snopes article about it. Banana Extinction
Having traveled in some tropical countries, one of the things I most remember about their fruits are the sheer NUMBER of different banana varieties. No monoculture. Your average roadside stand would have half a dozen varieties, and the one a mile down the road would have a few more. Tomorrow the mix would be different. And most of them would taste a lot better than the crap that's so widely available elsewhere!
I for one will welcome our new polycultural bananalords.
So, was granpa's banana more slippery?
Actually, that's a slightly hedged 'yes'.
Grampa's banana had a thicker, more durable skin, in addition to being larger than the bananas we youngun's know so well.
The other reason it's so popular as comic relief is because it actually was a real hazard back around 1915-ish. As a 'portable' fruit, they were handy to carry anywhere, and without streetcorner trash cans, the peels got tossed on the sidewalk as often as not. And considering bananas are (and were) the most popular fruit in the US (almost twice as popular as the good ol' apple), it really was a normal hazard. The Boy Scout handbook of 1914 actually listed removing a banana peel from the sidewalk as a 'good deed', it was that common an occurence.
As a side effect though, it *did* start many cities putting trash cans on busy streets, and enacting littering laws.
I live in Brazil where there are many types of bananas available. Any supermarket has at least three different types. Just off my head, I can name at least six types of Brazilian bananas: Ouro ("gold"), Prata ("silver"), d'Agua ("water"), Maçã ("apple"), Nanica ("dwarf"), da Terra ("earth").
Can someone please explain this to those of us that are not from the USA.
I thought the Popular Science article was much better: http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-06/can-fruit-be-saved
Meat and saturated fat were linked to heart disease which is now considered non-causative: contributory only. Only highly processed meats are still linked to cancers. Red meat is linked to male infertility but only because of beef hormone usage.
Salmonella infects 1 in 20,000 eggs, and generally only if the shell is cracked. For years it was supposed to cause heart disease, onyl for the WHO to establish that the more you eat the longer you live.
Margarine was supposed to be heart healthy and turned out to be the opposite.
Same with vegetable oils, but which cause cancer in lab animals (triggering an attempt to industrially convert polyunsaturates to monounsaturated oils).
I reckon there are two general rules: when is doubt do the opposite of what the experts tell you, and the second to establish what is anthropologically natural to us rather than chasing novel elixirs. After all, you can't be moderate or balanced with poisons (like margarine, a sort of plasticised oil).
Chiquita Brands International still isn't a "harmless" international company. The company was fined by the US Justice Department, to the tune of $25 million, for paying extortion fees to Colombian rebels between 1997 and 2004 (though the company has a history of doing this back to 1989). Granted, perhaps Chiquita was screwed if it did or screwed if it didn't-- I am not familiar with the details.
This "news" has been around for a long time. Even the summary says so. It's an old story: monoculture -> disease -> no more bananas. Unless you have zero knowledge of bananas, you heard about this years ago. Hmm, I wonder why they'd be raising the alarm now, even when the banana companies like Dole and Chiquita don't care?
Oh, I see. Somebody wants to skirt regulations regarding transgenic crops. "Won't somebody think of the bananas!!" ... Suckers.
Why is it a disease? I like bananas. Why should I not eat bananas? I understand that you want everyone to live according to your standards and morality, but really, why should I not eat bananas?
At the end of the 19th century, with the help of the US government, food companies like Dole and Chiquita helped create and prop up "banana republics" in latin america, which were in fact figurehead dictatorships geared towards producing raw materials and crops for US consumption, like bananas. In fact, before that time, the #1 most popular fruit in the US was the apple, but thanks to these companies, they turned that part of our culture on it's head and created a massive campaign to make the banana #1, using the pricing power of cheap bananas and government influence to steamroll a fruit that was, and still is, produced locally by US farmers.
The reason why they did this is not because bananas are better tasting or better for you, but because they were cheaper than local produce when you factor in highly cheap labor of the impoverished populace and favorable political conditions gained by less than ethical means.
And to be honest, Apples taste better than bananas. An apple is more durable, and can be made into more things, and supports your local economy .
This is absolutely bonkers. My wife's family lives in Wisconsin. You want them to survive on local produce over the winter? You want them to hoard dry goods so they can eat 6 months out of the year? Not to mention the exciting selection of nutritional deficits that most of the world suffered from before cheap year round fresh food selections. Really, this type of judgmental viewpoint bothers me so much. I really see your "EAT THIS WAY OR YOU HAVE A DISEASE!" moralism as no different from right wingers who think homosexuality is a disease.
You'd be surprised the number of vegatables that can be grown late into the fall season. In wisconsin, you don't exactly have to grow the vegetables near Madison, but there are tons of places within the continental US where you can get produce shipped north. You can cross the US from top to bottom by train or 18 wheeler in two days without trying very hard, And we ship things more fragile than fruit by truck these days.
You are taking the metaphor the GP is making way too far. Those who say "homosexuality is a disease" come from an illogical and bigoted stance about the inequality of "races" when in fact there's nothing biological to suggest one "race" is inferior to the other. On the other hand, to play devils advocate, not all fruits are created equal. Also, see my entry above about how the banana became popular by government and big business influence. There's some good reasons why you can be negative about this fruit.
Are you just making this up as you go along? Watching people "line up" for bananas in a supermarket? Food scarcity hasn't exactly been a problem in America in a number of years, I would be very interested in where you've seen people "line up" to get bananas, while bypassing all other fruits.
Food scarcity isn't a problem, but living in the middle and not on the more populated coasts, perhaps you simply don't see that sometimes the bananas on the shelves get sold out and they haven't restocked the shelves yet. I've seen that plenty of times. Then some people have to wait. It particularly happens in less affluent areas with high population density. Doesn't happen every day, but it's simply a matter of shelf space not food scarcity.
Good for you! We should all be more like you, thanks for holding yourself out there as an example of the Right Way to live!
You're welcome. Perhaps I can show you how to live better by trying to reduce your carbon footprint. After all, buying product locally as well as reducing my carbon footprint has positive impacts on my fellow human beings that I should be concerned with. Or would you rather just let your fellow man slip on a banana peel, break his neck, lose his job and his life savings and say "tough shit I don't care about you"?
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