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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").
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.