Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

About the book...

Is the banana going extinct? To most people, a banana is a banana: yellow and sweet, uniformly sized, always seedless. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In other parts of the world, bananas—like rice, wheat, and corn—are what keep millions of people alive.

"60 Minutes" on Chiquita and Colombia - were Dole and Del Monte guilty, too?

Though it fails to mention Chiquita's long and bloody history in Colombia, the CBS News program's report - which aired on May 11 - detailing the banana giant's payments to terrorist groups in Colombia, and the consequences of those payments, is remarkably hard-hitting, and features a sit-down interview with Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, who - to me - dodges a lot of questions. The big scoop here are accusations from a jailed Colombian terrorist that Dole and Fresh Del Monte also made payments.

What do you think? Is the report fair? Is Chiquita ducking responsibility.

Chiquita's Banana profits and new African plantations

Just a couple of quick notes from Chiquita's first-quarter financial report, issued May 1. The company made a $31.7 million profit - after losing $3.4 million the same period last year - fueled mostly by surging banana prices. What's interesting is that the actual amount of bananas people bought dropped - by one percent in the U.S., and fourteen percent in Europe - but because of bad weather and other market conditions that have constrained supply, prices have shot up: by 18% and 26% in the two selling areas, respectively. This made Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre very happy: "Banana pricing is very acceptable," he told investors, noting that prices have held pretty steady for over a decade.

The other bit of interesting news is the soon-to-come opening of the first big Chiquita plantations in Africa, in Mozambique and Angola. The reason these commercial banana farms are being launched on that continent is to get around European tariff regulations that make Latin America-originated bananas expensive to sell in Europe. But it was the cutting of land for new Cavendish (that's the world's commercial banana) plantations in Asia two decades ago that led to the spread of Panama Disease there; that malady is now epidemic and threatens the world's banana supply. There was no mention in Chiquita's earnings call - nor has the company ever mentioned - what precautions it is taking to make sure the new plantations it is opening, or the transportation networks that connect the plantations to shipping areas, will be effectively sealed from existing banana crops. I can't even begin to state how important this is in Africa, where bananas are a major subsistence crop, though I can tell you why Chiquita has made no such statement: because it has been proved, over and over, that it can't be done.

And in good news, Chiquita has just posted a fantastic "cool stuff" page, with tons of old print and television ads, banana stickers, and other archival material. I'll highlight some of it in the future, but it is definitely worth exploring.

News article on Chiquita's earnings call here. Download a pdf of Chiquita's results here. Listen to audio here.

Gallery: Fair-Trade Plantation in Ecuador

Image: Guardian newspaper, UK

A good slideshow from the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, featuring a plantation in Ecuador operated under the "Fair Trade" system, which guarantees workers a decent living wage and benefit. This is especially important in Ecuador, the world's largest banana exporting nation, which has weak labor laws. It is, however, hard to say exactly how much good banana workers derive from Fair Trade - such fruit has very low market share, and the actual benefits aren't clear (for example, in the gallery linked below, one of the positives is touted as labor-saving cable systems that make it easier to move bunches to packing areas, as opposed to carrying them manually. The reality is that most commercial plantations use cable systems - because they're more efficient, not out of altruism.)

The trick with banana fair trade is going to be figuring out how to make it work with a product that is, essentially, an ultra-cheap commodity. Fair-trade coffee is successful because people are willing to pay $14 a pound for it - you can match it up with high-quality beans and essentially offer a premium product at a higher price. Right now, the most successful fair trade bananas sold in the U.S. are offered as an ingredient in Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream; again, that's a product folks are willing to pay extra for. It remains to be seen whether Fair Trade bananas can be sold in large scale at the low prices most American consumers would probably demand. I hope the answer is yes.

CORRECTION: Fair Trade Chunky Monkey is - it seems - only offered in the UK version of the flavor (see this video, from the Brit B&J website; click on the "Ecuador" link at the bottom.) I've got a request in to the ice cream makers' U.S. spokespeople for clarification.

Watch the Guardian slide show here.

The bananas from the plantation pictured in the Guardian essay are marketed in the US under the OKE brand name. Find out more about them - including where to buy them - here

Help Flooded Ecuadorian Banana Farmers

Images from Oke's Flickr photostream.

To assist washed-out Ecuadorean banana farmers, fair-trade importer Oke is taking donations to buy a Bobcat earth-mover. It's a worthy cause. Read about it here.

More on fair trade, Ecuador's floods, and rising banana prices here, here, here, and especially here.

Suspended? For this?

Image: Lake County News-Sun

This seems draconian. Even worse is the kid quoted at the end, who sucks up and accepts his sentence.

ZION, Ill., April 23 (UPI) -- A Zion, Ill., high school has suspended 11 seniors involved in a prank that featured a student in a gorilla costume chasing banana-clad seniors in the hallways.

Zion-Benton Township High School handed seven-day suspensions to the costumed students, who phoned in sick before the stunt and wore pantyhose over their heads to conceal their identities during the prank, the Waukegan (Ill.) News-Sun reported Wednesday.

Some of the students said the school overreacted with the harsh punishment.

"What's funnier than a gorilla chasing bananas through a school? Nothing," said Andrew Leinonen, the prank's mastermind and the student who dressed as a gorilla. "It was a harmless prank."

However, others said they were just thankful the school decided not to bar them from prom and graduation.

"We think this is a just punishment," said Brendon Epker, one of the students who dressed as bananas. "We broke rules we shouldn't have broken."

A longer and more explanatory account of the whole affair is here.

A slideshow is here.

These kids deserve medals, not demerits.

Eat bananas, ensure a male heir

The recent Oxford University study showing that eating breakfast made women more likely to conceive male children than females centered specifically around potassium consumption, meaning bananas, whose phallic nature - in some cultures, at least - is believed to have an influence on what goes on in the womb.

"We were able to confirm the old wives' tale that eating bananas, and so having a high potassium intake, was associated with having a boy," said Fiona Matthews, who led the study of 740 first-time mothers published in the strangely-named journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B."

So, there you have it. Do with it what you will. Read more here.

Adios, bananero...

When I visited Honduras, one of the most interesting people I met was Gene Osmark, a former Chiquita researcher who regaled me with stories of both the good - and bad - old days of banana company dominance in Latin America. Gene wasn't one to pull a punch, and my conversations with him were honest, fascinating, and sometimes shocking. I received word that Gene passed away last week; he was, as Ivan Buddenhagen - another renowned banana researcher - remarked, "one of the last of the old guard."

Comment: it is, perhaps, too easy to see that old guard as simply part of a system of exploitation and misery. It is more complicated than that. As a corporate entity, United Fruit - Chiquita - did great damage. It wouldn't be a stretch to call it evil. But many of the scientists who worked for the company tried hard to improve the land they grew bananas on and the lives of the people they lived amidst. This is especially true of the post-1950s era banana researchers, who acutely understood the history that they were a part of.

There are fewer and fewer of these original banana folk left. Anyone interested in the history of the banana industry in Latin America would do well to spend time getting information from a primary source. I recommend you check out "Banana People," a collection of first-hand accounts of life working for Chiquita, assembled by Clyde Stephens, a former bananero now living in Florida.

Here's a description of the book:

"This book is a collection of short stories by BANANA PEOPLE who lived in the Tropics and savored a unique period that is now past history. Fifteen writers relate their favorite adventures, anecdotes, history, intrigues of the banana business and exciting plantation lifestyles of a bygone era. Contributors had a wide range of tropical experiences and include a former president of the United Fruit Company, vice presidents, engineers, a medical doctor, research scientists, accountants, pilots, professors and others."

You can order it for $20, plus shipping, here.

Baboon Prefers Bananas over Kittehs. Thank Goodness.

Though one's gotta say, kitteh don't look too happeh.

Bill Gates funds Banana Research

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has begun one of the largest privately-funded banana genetics research projects; the greenhouse breeding program is concentrating on subsistence bananas - the kind millions of people in the African highlands depend on as their primary source of nutrition - and using DNA engineering and traditional breeding techniques to increase levels of vitamin A and iron in those fruits.

Those are worthy goals, but I find it interesting that building disease resistance - the most important thing that needs to happen in the area surrounding Lake Victoria, where fungal wilts are rapidly destroying banana crops - seems to be a secondary goal, at least according to the article linked above. The project is being run by James Dale, a well-known banana biotech researcher who is quoted in my book.

Meanwhile, in Africa, some Gates foundation work is seen as controversial, precisely because it is technology-oriented. My feeling is that bananas - because they are quite difficult to breed, and because it is very late in the game in terms of improving their strength in the field - require as much technology as they can get. In this case, perhaps, this may be a version of Windows that is able to prevent viruses (sorry.)

The most expensive bananas in America?

A buck a pound - or more - for bananas?

Just spent a weekend with my girlfriend visiting the action-packed and gorgeous little town of McCall, Idaho - about two hours north of Boise. We did some amazing backcountry and nordic skiing - helped by a late-season dump that put almost a foot of fresh powder on the slopes (yes, the life of a struggling author. It kills!) - and generally had a good time checking out the coffee shops and restaurants in the lakeside village (population: 2,500, but getting trendy, according to the New York Times.)

But when we went in search of lunch, we stopped in at a small gourmet shop - the nice City Market & Wine, right on State Highway 55 - and I saw something I'd never, ever encountered: bananas for over a buck a pound (in fact, the price was $1.11.) The clerk explained that these organics - the country of origin wasn't noted, but I could tell from the stickers that they were from Mexico - had been going up for months (see my previous entry on banana prices, here), and had just broken the 99 cent barrier a week earlier.

Yes, McCall's an isolated resort town, and this was a gourmet market, so prices are going to be high. But for me, this is more shocking than gas at four bucks a gallon.

A banana tree in New Hampshire?

I saw this item in the online edition of the Concord Monitor, the daily newspaper of New Hampshire's capitol city. According to the writer, a banana plant has spontaneously yielded fruit in front of Canterbury elementary school. The article linked here claims to have dispatched a photographer, though I couldn't seem to find a photograph. But the item turned out to be true. I contacted principal Mary Morrison, and here's what she wrote back:

"Yes, we have banana tree in our front hallway. The father of a fourth grade student who works in a nursery offered to donate a plant to the school. His son chose the banana tree. This was three years ago. The three foot high plant is now almost ten feet tall and has a bunch of green bananas."

Though indoor banana trees aren't rare, having them yield fruit isn't necessarily common. The first person in the western world to accomplish such a feat was Linneaus, the father of modern taxonomy, and he did it in the 18th century! Hint to the schoolkids: bananas don't ripen until they're picked - that's a risk, though, since they don't always ripen when removed from the tree. I'd suggest starting with one and seeing what happens.

Added, April 2: Pictures, courtesy principal Morrison!

Have Banana Prices Gone Insane?

Flooding in Ecuador - the world's largest exporter of bananas - have raised prices of what is traditionally the cheapest fruit in the supermarket. Since January, 2008 - if you buy bananas, you've certainly noticed this - prices have gone way up: in Los Angeles, from about 59 cents to as much as 79 cents a pound.

So far, the largest Ecuadorean banana company - Bonita - has made no statement on the crisis, and banana sales have remained strong - but flat - because the fruit remains the lowest-priced on store shelves. But the situation is an illustration of how fragile the banana market is; if disease should strike Latin America, prices will go up far more than the floods have prompted them to, and for the first time in over a century, apples (which now cost between about a dollar and three dollars a pound) could once again be a better value than the world's favorite fruit.

Despite the troubles, former Ecuadorean presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa remains the richest man in his country, and child labor laws there remain weak. Pressure to keep banana prices down in the face of the flooding crisis will likely affect neither.

This ninny says bananas disprove evolution...

This fellow, Ray Comfort, is using a banana to prove that a "designer" created the universe. The general idea is that only an intelligent force could have created such a naturally convenient item (with a protective wrapper, an easy-to-use "pull tab," perfect shape, etc.) There is so much stupid about this that it would be laughable, if so many people didn't fall for it. The reality, simply put, is that the banana is so "perfect" for human consumption because we've spent seven millennia - longer than just about any other crop - cultivating it to be so. In other words, since we've selected and reselected the best bananas, finally arriving at the one we eat today, the fruit - rather than proving that an unseen hand created it - tells us the opposite: we're the ones who made it what it is, and we used the tools of evolution to do so.

Oh, and also, the other guy in the video is washed-up child star Kirk Cameron, of "Growing Pains." Crediblity achieved.

Watch the video...if you want to read more about Comfort, or the Athiest Test, click below (you'll also find out why peanut butter contains yet another proof of a willful creator of the universe...)

More Chiquita Trouble in Colombia

Last year, Chiquita paid a $25 million fine after admitting supporting terrorist groups in Colombia during 1990s and the early part of this decade. This week, the world's largest banana company was sued by the families of five Florida missionaries killed by the AUC - the right-wing terror faction that the banana company was paid the money to. Three of the missionaries - David Mankins, Mark Rich, and Rick Tenenof - were kidnapped in 1993 and never seen again; they were declared dead nine years later. Steve Welsh and Timothy Van Dyke, also of the New Tribes Mission, were abducted and killed by the AUC in 1994.

A lawyer for the families said that the news of Chiquita's protection payments "started the ball rolling" on the suits, arguing that the money enabled the AUC to arm itself and expand activities. A Chiquita spokesperson called the allegation "absolutely untrue."

In an analysis on the Family Security Matters website, Douglas Farah writes:

"Wow. And now we have evidence the FARC is kidnapping people, producing cocaine and building front companies. A sad and bloody story that will not end soon, and is dragged on by companies like Chiquita who place their business ventures with terrorists above human life."

Strong words, but hard to argue, given the millions of dollars Chiquita gave to the drug-running, murdering AUC (not my opinion; the U.S. Department of Justice, under both the Clinton and Bush administrations, says so) just to bolster banana sales (after all, "protecting employees" meant maintaining a presence in the country - Chiquita could have shut down all Colombia operations.)

Dozens of Americans were killed by guerilla and terrorist groups in Colombia during the time Chiquita was paying the so-called protection money. If the New Tribes suit is successful, look for a run on the courts.

Links:

Orlando Sentinel story

New Tribes Mission

Family Security Matters

Sticker image from Becky Martz's fabulous collection

What does Keira Knightley have to do with our endangered banana?

She's shooting a movie called "The Duchess," where she plays Lady Cavendish, the 18th Century Duchess of Devonshire. Here's the description of the movie from AceShowbiz:

"Duchess chronicles the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, an ancestor of Princess Diana who was alternately celebrated and reviled for her extravagant political and personal lives. Accompanying Knightley in the cast are Ralph Fiennes as William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey."

In my book, I explain that our banana - the endangered one - is called the Cavendish. It is named after the Duchess's son, the third William Cavendish, and the sixth duke. This Cavendish - who never married, and was known as "the bachelor duke" - spent his time building up the family estate's gardens and greenhouses. Around 1830, he received a sample banana plant that had been brought to England from the South Pacific. The Cavendish banana's stock eventually was brought to the Caribbean, where it became the "mother plant" for most of the fruit we eat today.

Reducing the carbon impact of supermarket bananas

Don't blame the cute l'il ethylene molecule.

The "miracle" - if you want to call it that - of the banana industry is that it manages to transport a fragile fruit thousands of miles and still get it to your supermarket green, ready to fully ripen ("flecked with brown," as the Chiquita jingle says) in exactly seven days. For over a century, this has been accomplished by controlling the atmosphere that surrounds the bananas in transport.

When fruit ripens, it gives off ethylene gas. Ethylene is a naturally-occurring substance, emitted as fruits ripen, and providing a sort of on-off switch to let other fruits nearby "know" when to ripen. (That's why bananas ripen so evenly across a bunch.) It is also the "world's most commonly produced organic compound," according to a Science Daily report. Fruit distributors keep "ripening rooms," where levels of ethylene can be controlled to hasten or delay ripening.

The report also notes that the current way industrial ethylene is generated for those ripening rooms (as well as dozens of other uses, including as a mecical anesthetic) releases a "miasma of greenhouse gasses." (Sigh.) But scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Lab have recently come up with a new way to produce the gas via creating a high-temperature membrane that blocks the release of greenhouse gasses, allowing only harmless hydrogen to get through.

Monkeys+Bananas=Moola?

California's latest racket lottery game is "Go Bananas," a scratch-off contest that claims odds of about one winner per every five tickets (at a buck each.) That includes tickets that win you other tickets. The chance of getting real cash are twelve to one. In the interest of public service, I've purchased five tickets, labelled them, and will scratch one out every day for the coming week. If you're really bored, check back in tomorrow to see what I won (half of everything I win will go to Bioversity International, the banana conservation organization.)

THE WAY THE TICKET WORKS: You scratch off six boxes. If three match you win. There's a bonus "quick $10 spot" box that - if the number ten is revealed - nets you that amount of money.

MONDAY I LOST. Got a pair of $6.00 scratches, and one $500. Tease. TUESDAY I LOST. Got a pair of $150s. WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, LOST LOST LOST! Lesson: you can't save bananas with lottery tickets.

Here's a stupid page from the California lottery that lists the entire array of theft devices they offer.

The point of all this, besides making me richer than the book ever could, is to point out - once again - that the origin of the term "go bananas" is not necessarily known. See here.

Amazing Chiquita banana cartoon from the 1940s

Images from the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Read the full post for direct links and downloadable (!!!) cartoons.

In the 1940s, as disease ravaged banana plantations in Latin America, the major banana companies implemented strategies to convince consumers to buy their particular brand of fruit. The Chiquita banana campaign was, and is, one of the most successful in marketing history. The singing, dancing, sexy fruit was based on the real-screen cinema exploits of Brazilian bombshell Carmen Miranda, who'd famously cavorted with man-sized bananas in the 1942 Busby Berkeley musical, “The Gang’s All Here.”

Doomsday Vaults and Black Box bananas

The "Fort Knox of Food." From the International Herald Tribune.

The recent publicity about the opening of the "Global Seed Vault" in Longyearbyen, Norway, has prompted some questions about whether or not bananas are included. The vault is 500 meters deep, buried under a snow-capped mountain, and is filled with over a hundred million (!!!) different kinds seeds, all as a hedge against the predicted destruction to plant life global warming may be about to wreak. The project was described as a "backup hard drive" for agriculture by the New York Times (story). But bananas aren't included. Why?

Simple: bananas don't have seeds. And banana plantlets - the primary means of storing genetic material for the fruit - are an impossible fit for the Norwegian project, which can only store the so-called "orthodox" seeds - the kind that can be preserved dry. Storing bananas, as a recent press release from Bioversity International noted, need "human intervention. That's always been the story with bananas. We brought them from the forest thousands of years ago, and we've carried them around the world. They aren't just a product of human enterprise - they're a companion to humanity.

Liquid nitrogen keeps the banana materials at minus 320 degrees fahrenheit (-196 degrees c.)

So, is there a banana bank account out there, working as a hedge against disaster? Yes - it is called the "Black Box" collection, stored at the French Research Institute for Development, in Montpellier, France. The tissue samples there duplicate of those stored at the International Transit Center at the Catholic University of Leuven, in Belgium; that institution is one of the leading center for banana genetic research. "It's a mirror of the need for crop diversity itself," Emile Frison, Bioversity's Director General, said. "Just as humanity needs different varieties of crops, so different crops need different kinds of long-term storage."

That's good news for bananas, which face many present-day external attackers - diseases and pests especially virulent to the fruit, which suffers from declining genetic diversity - that are as destructive as the doomsday scenarios contemplated by the ice mountain project.

(This story is based on a press release from Bioversity. Read it in its entirety here - it includes the story of how the Black Box works, and why bananas require unique storage techniques.)

More great banana art from Gonzalo Fuenmayor

"Cuando las Miradas no Alcanzan," 47x47", oil on canvas, 2005

"Unaited gui Stand," 92 x 44 inches, oil on canvas, 2003*

Gonzalo is an artist from Colombia, site of some of the must brutal violence in the sad history of the Banana Republics. His grandfather worked for United Fruit (Chiquita), and tried - Gonzolo told me in an email - to paint a more sympathetic picture of the banana giant, which was responsible for the massacre of at least 1,000 banana workers during a strike in 1929 (the bloodshed was fictionalized by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in "100 Years of Solitude."

The conflict between differing versions of the story - and Gonzalo's own soul-searching about the relationship between the fruit, his own life, his culture, and his family give his work a high level of intensity (which is enhanced by the size of his canvases - some bigger than eight feet across.) I love these paintings. The feel both documentary and impressionistic, all at once.

Better Red than dead?

A Jamaican red banana plant, from Hirt's Gardens.

One possible alternative to the threatened yellow Cavendish banana is the so-called "red" banana - that's the color of the fruit's flesh - which is grown in Colombia, Ecuador, and in other parts of South and Central America. The "red" is sometimes considered a variant or cousin of the delicious Philippine Lacatan,

The Telegraph newspaper, in the U.K., now reports that some grocers have begun offering the differently-colored variety to consumers, and are having success with it. Describing the fruit as having a "raspberry flavor," and "creamy white pink flesh," the story goes on to say that consumers are responding well to the new offering. (I'm not too sure the "raspberry" descriptor is right. Red bananas, to me, are more apple-like.)

So far, only one UK supermarket chain is offering the fruit. A manager there said that he doubted that the red banana could replace the yellow one, that it was seen more as an attempt to add variety to the limited-to-one choice banana consumers have had for over a century.

The red banana isn't a Cavendish replacement technologically, either, since it grows slower, in fewer places, and ripens much faster than the hardier, blander, and more widespread yellow variety. But diversity is key to saving the banana, so adding a new color - or two (orange bananas grow in the South Pacific) is a great start.

Whole Foods markets in the U.S. often stock red bananas.

A giant wall of (almost) rotting bananas...

This comes from Oddity Central, via Terri Wahl (aka Auntie Em): New York artist Stefan Sagmeister has installed a panel of 7,200 bananas at the Deitch Projects gallery. This fruited megalith was put up on January 31 as part of the "Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far" exhibit, which hinges around the idea of continuous transformation (the structure itself is in a state of rapid change - rather fetid at this point, since yellow cavendish bananas generally last about seven days before mushing up. The yellow brown barrier tumbles down next week.)

Links: Gallery - Artist - Show>

Bring fairness to the fruit

Harriet Lamb's new book, "Fighting the Banana Wars and Other Fairtrade Battles: How We Took on the Corporate Giants to Change the World", is out in the U.K. I'm awaiting a review copy, but an excerpt was printed on the NewConsumer magazine website. Fairtrade is a system that seeks to ensure that the folks who produce the foods we eat are well compensated for it; work in safe environments; and have an element of ownership over those products. Bananas were one of the first items Fairtrade advocates worked on in the early part of this decade, which makes sense, because bananas are highly visible at market, and banana workers have been particularly ill treated since the industry was founded in the 19th century.

U.S. consumers don't see much Fairtrade product - you'll find beans produced under that banner at Starbucks, but very little else,especially at your average chain grocery - and globally, bananas with the certification don't make much of a statistical dent in overall sales: less than one-tenth of one percent of the 13 million metric tons of the fruit produced every year for export are certified by Fairtrade Labeling Organization (it is also important to point out that Fairtrade bananas are not necessarily organic, and that farming conventional bananas - no matter who receives the profits - requires applications of often-toxic chemicals.)

But, as the book notes, Fairtrade's impact has also been symbolic, and the idea is spreading. One advocate put it this way:

"Don’t look only at sales volumes and market shares, look at the issues on the agenda, look at what the public are asking and what companies are debating. When we go into negotiating rooms with companies now, even if they’re not yet doing Fairtrade, they all have to do something on social and environmental issues."

What place does Fairtrade have in the global effort to save the banana? If one of the answers involves making more kinds of banana available to consumers - building a market in so-called "varietal" fruit, which would likely command a premium price - that could dovetail nicely with the economic development ideals of Fairtrade.

Learn more about Fairtrade.

Visitors to ex-banana castle are welcomed by goddess Venus with open no arms.

Converting former factories to art spaces isn't new - but turning an old banana processing facility into one is. This ex-industrial building, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the home of D. Theodoredis & Sons Inc., a Chiquita subsidiary that distributed fruit to markets in the northeastern U.S. The old plant included ripening rooms - where temperature and atomosphere are controlled to keep fruit green as long as possible - and was a receiving point for fruit brought by trains from ports along the eastern seaboard.

The 63,000 square foot plant was repurposed in 1998 as the "Banana Factory," a community art center that includes galleries, classrooms, studios, and a theater (the "factory" part of the name is a misnomer, but it somehow feels appropriate; I wonder if locals called it that historically.)

I'm working on finding out how long the Theodoredis operation ran, when it was sold to Chiquita, and when it was shuttered. I'd like to hear from you if you know anything about the old banana operation, if you've visited the art center, and especially if you can make any before-and-after comparisons. Leave a comment or email me at the link on my "About" page.

Here's a link to the Banana Factory.

Will a weep-less onion lead to slip-less bananas?

You'd cry, too.

Researchers in New Zealand and Japan have engineered what they describe as a "tear-free" onion, according to a report from the AFP wire service. The happy onion was developed by the Crop and Food Research institute. The lead scientist on the project, Colin Eady, described how it was done:

"We previously thought the tearing agent was produced spontaneously by cutting onions, but [a Japanese research team] proved it was controlled by an enzyme," he told AFP from his home outside Christchurch. "Here in New Zealand we had the ability to insert DNA into onions, using gene-silencing technology developed by Australian scientists. The technology creates a sequence that switches off the tear-inducing gene in the onion so it doesn't produce the enzyme. So when you slice the vegetable, it doesn't produce tears."

(read the rest of the AFP article on Yahoo! news)

Genetic modification isn't all that scary if you really think about it. And though nothing may be more valuable than the ability to make tears cease to flow, for bananas - aside from developing one that's friendlier to pedestrians - the mission is more conventional: strengthen the fruit so that it will grow better, resist disease, and reduce the use of harmful chemicals that damage the environment and the health of plantation workers.

Another great banana blog

I just discovered the really cool "Yummy Banana" blog, which features banana pictures, recipes and philosophy (!!!) from around the world. My favorite entry? This image of a Cavendish banana with monkeys drawn on it.

By the way, in colonial Mexico - this was the time of the Spanish inquisition - prisoners often communicated with each other by hiding notes inside bananas.

Visit Yummy Banana. Or see the image at Flickr.

Dancing Bananas Department: An Assortment

The "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" dancing banana has been an Internet meme since the late 1990s; I've posted it here after numerous requests. Enjoy the original version, and then two more recent tributes.

Banana Splits of the World

DAIRY QUEEN: "Delicious DQ soft serve covered in luscious strawberry, pineapple, and chocolate toppings, with whipped topping and nestled between a sweet banana." DQ's advantage is that it is ubiquitous; her highness has outposts in nearly every U.S. state, and internationally, too (I ate at one in Beijing.)The ice cream is special - no other soft-serve tastes like DQ - and that makes the split nearly perfect. Price: $3.00. Rating: four of five. Royal hint: go for the banana split blizzard instead - all the ingredients, mixed into a cup. Locations: Almost 6,000.



CARVEL'S "BANANA BARGE": No official description. But the picture speaks for itself. The best quality soft-serve in the bunch, but just two scoops/swirls. Unconventional name, unconventional presentation, but it works. Price: $6.00. OW! Stars: Five of five. Locations: 500 (recently opened several stores in Los Angeles.)



BASKIN-ROBBINS: "Delight in a traditional treat with your favorite ice cream flavors, two banana slices, crowned with chopped almonds, whipped cream and three cherries." About as close to the classic banana split as you can get. But traditional hard ice cream suffers in the age of Haagen-Dazs. Rating: two and a half of five. Price: about $5.00.



TASTEE-FREEZ: Claims to have invented soft-serve. I'm not so sure. But this is high-quality stuff - almost as creamy as Carvel. R ating: four of five. Price: $3.00 About 100 locations, with the most in California, Texas, and Illinois. One in Alaska.



FOSTER'S FREEZE: Weird, yucky, yellow ice milk. This California chain has passed its glory days, though you can find them in - and this is kind of yucky, too - hybridized "El Pollo Loco" stores. Plus, the picture is BOGUS: look at the glass dish. Price: $3.00 Rating: one of five. Locations: About 40.




CULVER'S: This midwestern chain features not ice cream, but creamier frozen custard (whole milk, egg yolks.) Don't forget to eat ten or so of the chain's "Butter Burgers," which taste exactly the way they sound: smooth as meat. Rating: SIX (!!!!) of five. Price: $4.00. Locations: 350.



SONIC DRIVE IN: Another middle-of-America chain. Best known for 1950s-style car hop service, the ice cream is pretty undistinguished (note that the regal sundae is positioned behind some DQ Blizzard-like treat in the picture.) Some stores sell deep-fried pickles. Rating: two of five (add two points if you're pregnant.) Prices: $3.00. Locations: 3,000.

More on monkeys and bananas

My friend Tim lived in Costa Rica for almost five years. He confirms not just that our simian relatives eat bananas, but also how they eat them:

"As I remember, they ate them upside down. Used their teeth to pull apart the peel. Bigger monkeys would bite chunks off or/and the smaller monkeys would break off chunks with both hands and sit and nibble or chomp away at the prized package in their hands. Actually it would be cool to get a small video of this on your site. Err...dont mean to tell you what ot do, I just remember it being real cute to watch."

Your wish is my command, amigo:

Tim, by the way, owns a really cool bike shop in Platteville, Wisconsin.

How Many Books, including mine, have the words "Changed the World" in their title?

963 in nonfiction, according to Amazon. ("Banana" is number nine.)