WALKING ON THIN ICE

foto by smith

there is but one banana. and it is dying.

we eat one banana most the world over, all 100 billion of them consumed annually. it is the cavendish banana, and it is the same whether it’s grown in honduras, thailand, jamaica or the canary islands. bananas are seedless, hence are grown from cuttings, and by this stage of the game, all cuttings have come from one cutting. the cavendish is essentially a clone - each an identical twin to one first found in southeast asia in the early part of the 20th century, and put into commercial production about 50 years ago.

there’s already been one major banana wipe-out. before 1960, we all ate the gros michel, a banana that was larger and tastier than the fruit we now eat. but a fungus called panama disease wiped them out, so they switched to the cavendish because it was immune.

now a new version of the disease is working its way through the cavendish population - panama disease race 4 has wiped out plantations in indonesia, malaysia, australia, taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of southeast asia. they figure africa and south america aren’t far behind.

and this time there’s 2 diseases attacking - panama race 4, a soil fungus, and black sigatoka, a leaf fungus.

to make it worse, the un food and agriculture organization (fao) has warned that wild banana species are rapidly going extinct as indian forests are destroyed, while many traditional farmers’ varieties are also disappearing.

“yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today” - a 1923 song hit.

mom always warned me about reducing genetic biodiversity on this planet and putting all my bananas in one basket.

foto by smith