The "The Banana Is Only The Start Of It!" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Taking a ride along the east coast of the island of Barbados.  Carol and I, along with traveling friends Jere and Just Sue, have made two trips to the island that is located in the southern Caribbean.  Along the southeast coast of the island is the town known as Bathsheba which is just beautiful with huge rock formations directly offshore and row after row of banana plants along the opposite side of the road.  

Driving the roads in Bathsheba.

During our stays on Barbados we saw many banana plantations which were filled with bananas in all stages of growth.  Bananas are plentiful in many of the Caribbean islands as well as the countries of Belize, Jamaica, Costa Rico, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Guadeloupe, Dominica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Nicaragua, Panama and Columbia.  Bananas do best in areas where the temperatures range from 79 to 88 degrees.  

We passed many banana plants as we
drove the roads in Bathsheba.

Rainfall should average about 70 inches a year with the rainfall distributed throughout the year.  Altitude must not exceed 980 feet and sheltered valleys that have little wind make perfect growing conditions for the plants that have shallow roots and can easily be uprooted.  The banana industry is huge with some countries producing over 200 million tons in a single year.  Raising bananas is a labor-intensive industry and in some cases rivaling the government as the next largest employer on the islands.  In 1950 most bananas were exported from Central America by the American owned United Fruit Company.  Guatemala was paid modest amounts of money by the company for large areas of land on which they grew bananas.  Not only did they control the banana industry, they controlled transportation when they built the first railway in the country which was meant to be used to transport bananas.  In 1950 the company's profits where twice the gross domestic product of the entire country of Guatemala.  But...they did little to understand the biology of growing bananas.  They had one variety...the Gros Michel.  Bananas grown in this area of the World were Gros Michel.  Cuttings from the best specimens were replanted and thus all bananas were genetically identical. The banana plantations of Central America in the 1950s were not only the largest collective organism alive at that time, but perhaps ever.  True genius economically!  As the plantations of bananas expanded across the American tropics, scientists wondered what would happen if a banana-attacking pathogen would arrive.  Well, it happened!  Panama disease (known as fusarium wilt) started to wipe out the banana plantations.  Nearly all the plantations in Guatemala were devastated and then abandoned.  The Gros Michel was in trouble.  But, there was another variety known as the Cavendish, but it tasted different then the Gros Michel.  

The Cavendish banana which we buy today.  But for how long?

The Cavendish was not affected by the Panama disease and was planted in the fields abandoned due to the disease.  It was soon exported to the United States along with a massive advertising campaign lauding the benefits of the new banana.  And, boy did the people fall for it.  They loved the new banana strain.  If you were born after 1950 it is unlikely that you ever ate anything except the Cavendish.  As expected, the Cavendish bananas are all genetically identical.  In 1984 the United Fruit Company rebranded as Chiquita.  And...guess what.  Another pathogen has arrived.  And...what I just wrote is true of many species of our crops.  Many of the key species of fruits and vegetables are in trouble.  We tend to experience pleasure when we eat our favorite foods and the more we feed ourselves the foods, the more we create a world dominated by just a few productive crops that could be threatened just because of their commonness.  Many crops today are at risk from pests, pathogens and climate change.  I for one love strawberries that are grown in Lancaster County during the spring of the year, but the season is only a month or so long.  I long for these strawberries, but when I buy strawberries at the grocery store from other areas, I'm disappointed.  Will scientists be able in the near future to come up with a diversity of crops that we will be able to enjoy at all times?  They must solve the puzzle that we surely will face someday or our food sources may vanish.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.