Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

British Supermarket "Banana Hammocks"

New banana shelving at British markets. Photo: Guardian.

Tesco, the British supermarket chain, is unveiling what is the first real change in the way bananas are sold and displayed in stores since the variety of fruit we eat today - called Cavendish - arrived in the 1960s to replace its disease-destroyed predecessor. (Our Cavendish is a fragile, and had to be bagged and boxed; the older fruit, Gros Michel, was tough, and was simply sent to stores in giant bunches.) Tesco's "hammocks," pictured above, cradle the fruit, preventing it from bruising.

Though the primary motivator seems to be preventing waste - tons of roughed-up Cavendish are discarded each year - a second advantage, a Tesco produce manager told the Guardian newspaper, is that the shelving allows the chain to fine-tune ripeness, offering fruit at "all stages" between yellow and green.

What's most interesting isn't what this means for the banana industry now, but for the future. With the Cavendish breed under attack by a deadly and incurable fungus, new breeds are eventually going to arrive at our stores. From what we know, they are likely to be varieties even more fragile than the fruit we eat today. While this is primarily a problem at the growing and shipping end of the banana supply chain, developing ways to present and maintain delicate fruit to consumers is also key.  Tesco seems to have made a huge leap in solving that problem.

A Guide to Those "Baby" Bananas - and What They Prove

Huggable, lovable - but not the kind of baby banana that I'm talking about.

Though the vast majority of bananas we buy - statistically, all - are of the endangered Cavendish variety, there's a good chance you've seen something else, these days and if you're a banana-type (or have become one), you might have wondered: what are those little bananas?

Both Chiquita and Dole offer versions of the half-sized fruit, with Chiquita selling them under the "Minis" brand, and Dole offering them as "Baby" bananas.

In the "big" banana world, there's absolutely no difference between what Chiquita, Dole (or any other commercial banana importer) sells: everything is Cavendish. Action surrounds small-time fruit. For the first time in over a century, the two biggest banana companies are slugging it out for a market niche with different varieties.

The Chiquita "Mini" is a breed called Pisang Mas, originally from Malaysia, but now - like all bananas imported to the U.S. - grown in Latin America.

Dole actually sells three different varieties under the Baby band name - Orito, Lady Finger, and Manzano.

The fruit are tough to find, since they're in various stages of test-marketing, as well as subject to seasonal variation. They also cost about three times as much as their ordinary counterparts. But they're worth seeking out, and not just because they prove - possibly for the first time to the average American consumer - that there's something beyond the generic banana. Though the four types share some characteristics (beyond size), they're also quite different from each other.

I've put together a guide to the four varieties, but one caveat: no great banana arrives easily. Dole doesn't distinguish between the three types it offers - they're all labelled the same - so side-by-side taste tests are going to be tough. But persevere. The results will be worth it (and ignore the for-kids marketing that the banana giants have attached to the product. Sure, they are great after school, as Chiquita's says. But this isn't baby food.)

Oh, and one more thing, and you MUST do this, or else your adventure in little bananas will surely fail: LITTLE BANANAS TASTE HORRIBLE UNTIL THEY'RE RIPE - AND RIPE, FOR LITTLE BANANAS, IS NOT YELLOW! You need to let the fruit turn brown or else it will not be sweet or soft enough. This will go against every banana extinct you have been trained to adhere to. Trust me.

CHIQUITA'S PISANG MAS (BRAND NAME: MINI)

• Super sweet - but only when very ripe. This is a fruit that is awesome when "peaking," but the peak can be hard to catch. When not peaking, not so good.
• Thin-skinned, so it bruises easily.
• IDENTIFYING: Easy. The only one Chiquita sells.

DOLE'S BABY (TYPE II - ORITO):

Orito Banana, from Ecuador's Goldenforce.

• Possibly the sweetest of the four varieties - making it (when ripe - see above) one of the best bananas for smoothies.
• Grown almost exclusively in Ecuador, where labor laws are weak, making this a very high-margin, high-political cost fruit.
• Identification: Chubby. If the country of origin is Ecuador, almost definitely Orito.

DOLE BABY (TYPE II - LADY FINGER):

Ladyfinger, meet Cavendish. Photo: Australian Tropical Fruits Portal

• Similar peaking/ripening characteristics as Pisang Mas.
• Doesn't easily turn brown when cut, making it perfect for fruit salads.
• Susceptible to Panama Disease Race One, the malady that killed the first worldwide commercial banana crop - and which still exists today.
• Closer to a mini-Cavendish in appearance. Slender(ish.) Super popular in Australia, so if you've got an Aussie in tow ask him or her for identification help.

DOLE BABY (TYPE III - MANZANO/APPLE):

The chubby Manzano, or "apple" banana. Photo: Thrifty Foods

• Falls into the "apple" banana category - giving it a unique, tangy-sweet taste. Much less bland than our Cavendish, but some banana marketers have traditionally believed that consumers would reject such a different-flavored fruit.
• Definitely the most "gourmet" banana of the bunch.
• Small ripeness/sweetness issue. Can be eaten a little bit less brown if you like the tart flavor, but you must wait beyond brown - until the skin is black - for the highest sugar content (which will give you a fabulous, multi-dimensional bite.)
• Difficult to grow in wet, lowland conditions
  
• Easier to find than others - sold under many brand names (or none at all) in Latin markets, where it is often a Mexican import.
• Identification tips: Significantly fatter, chunkier than Cavendish and probably the other little bananas, as well.

Once you've tried a couple, it's worth thinking a bit about what this all means in a world where the single fruit that we generally eat is threatened with practical extinction. The arrival of these alternate bananas in our markets shows that variety is possible, and that the commercial banana companies are willing to experiment with it (even with the for-kids-only marketing tilt.)

Despite this, the banana companies are likely very hesitant to move the fruit into any testing beyond these niches. The reason is that - according to conventional industry wisdom - there's simply too much "wrong" with the pint-sized fruit. The main arguments against mainstreaming mini-bananas include:

• Ripening. All of these fruit must be quite dark to taste good. The banana companies are (rightly?) afraid that the typical consumer is so well conditioned toward seeing a golden banana as perfect that wider acceptance would simply never occur.
• Production. The varieties in question can't be grown as broadly, geographically speaking, as Cavendish. There probably isn't enough land in Latin America to make any one of these varieties anything near to a market share winner.
• Shipping: These are thin-skinned fruit. Today's banana supply chain is so industrialized that the little fruit don't fit into it, requiring costly "custom" handling all along the way. For an industry built on turning an exotic tropical fruit into a commodity as cheap and ubiquitous as a fast-food burger, the idea of reinventing itself to handle more complex products may feel both financially and culturally risky.
• Marketing. People buy bananas by the bunch. Would the price/weight equation shift with a smaller banana as our main choice, or even as a more prominent alternate? The banana has been America's favorite fruit - by far - since the 1920s. Changing the very size, shape, and price of that fruit into something completely new would be a terrifying prospect for the banana companies, which introduced the fruit to us, struggled to make it our favorite, and have fought - often spilling blood - to keep it exactly the same ever since.

Despite all this, change has to come.

All of these arguments are based on a single premise: that the banana we eat today will last forever. It won't. It might not even last a decade.

The truth is that, as a living organism, all bananas have strengths, and all bananas have weaknesses. The biggest weakness the world's banana crop has today, though, has nothing to do with the fruit itself: it has to do with the human folly of relying on a single variety to feed millions.

The half-sized varieties from Chiquita and Dole are not, I'm told, doing all that well at the market. Some of Dole's farms in Ecuador that were devoted to the Orito fruit are reported to have closed. But the proof of concept - getting the fruit from there to here, figuring out how to market and sell it - has been accomplished, and despite my frequent criticism of the banana companies, there's credit deserved for that.

The experiment, however, needs to be seen as more than just marketing. The biological common sense - and necessity - of breaking the Cavendish monoculture needs to be acknowledged, as well. It is in combining salesmanship with this common sense that will lead the industry away from the dead end it is now rapidly heading toward. The "Mini" and "Baby" fruit provide a blueprint - even, focused as it is on children, it appears to have been written in crayon.

Banana Science

Star Trek Day at Bananabook.org - and a new T-Shirt of the Month...

The new movie is out. To celebrate (OK, this is a stretch) I offer this post, featuring a t-shirt I encountered when I went to see a lecture by George Takei - aka Mr. Sulu, of the original version of the series, and the subsequent movies - at the California Institute of Technology last month. The organizer wore an awesome banana-themed shirt.

     

Backstory on the shirt: the organizer told me that a couple of years ago, a banana scavenger hunt was held on campus. Students were required to steal as many different variations on the fruit as they could - pictures, books, or actual edible product. The garment was home-designed as a symbol of the merry adventure. 

(Also: the speech was amazing. Takei is a gay-rights activist, and he told the story of how, as a boy, he was among those Japanese-Americans forcibly removed to internment camps during World War II, and how the loss of civil rights for his family was no different than it is today for gays denied the right - among others - to marriage. Somehow, Takei managed to credibly link this to the vision of the future that Star Trek - and especially Star Trek creator Gene Rodenberry - first brought to the screen in the 1960s. I completely bought it, but of course, I'm already on board, as my secret past indicates.)

And - not unbelievably, if you're a fan - Memory Alpha, the online ST compendium of everything, actually includes TWO banana-related entries in its official encyclopedia of the nearly fifty-year-old cultural phenomenon. Here and here and here.

And yes, the film opened today. I've timed this post to appear literally as I'm sitting down to see it in Hollywood's fabulous Cinerama Dome!

Australian Bananas - only - for Australian Flights

 EVIDENCE: Qantas passenger Toni Rogers found this non-Aussie sticker on her in-flight banana. Image: Cairns Post.

Australia and the Philippines both have banana problems: Panama Disease, the wilt that threatens the world's commercial banana crop, is present in both places. Australia's banana industry is reeling from the malady, which it is attempting - with little success -  to contain by quarantining infected plantations. 

The controversy began two weeks ago, when a passenger on a flight from New Zealand noticed that the Cavendish banana she was served bore a Philippine sticker. Within days, Australian banana growers and politicians were demanding Qantas stop serving non-native fruit - both as an issue of national pride and to protect the country's banana crop. At first, the airline resisted, but last week, it gave in.

So, is this "threat" for real? Panama Disease is easy to spread. A little bit of dirt could conceivably 

begin a chain of infection for a continent. But there's not much dirt on a washed, picked banana that comes to an airport caterer from a wholesale grocer, as the fruit served aboard Qantas at either end of its flights does. Randy Ploetz, one of the top researchers in Panama Disease -  he identified the strain that is currently spreading worldwide - says that "the probability of this being a problem seems pretty remote. I'd see this mainly as a symbolic gesture in support of their ongoing campaign." 

I agree - though I'm not sure what the symbolism represents to dismayed Philippine growers, or to passengers on inbound Qantas flights who now have to satisfy themselves with peanuts. 

Banana Nut Cheerios: Review and Rant

You can barely see the bananas on the package, and the product itself could do with a bit more banana flavor, too.

You will think I'm a lousy sourpuss for saying this, but there are WAY too many kinds of Cheerios. But that's because you probably don't know how many kinds: Eleven. That's right. With the addition of the new banana-nut flavor, you now need your toes to count the number of varieties of America's favorite breakfast food that are currently available on store shelves.

I don't care how much you love Cheerios. Eleven kinds? That's insane! (There are two Yogurt Burst flavors; only one is shown.)

The other thing that's totally sucky about Cheerios is the brand's constant harping on the "fact" that eating it "may" reduce the risk of heart disease. SHENANIGANS and BOGOSITY! Not eating a lot of bacon may reduce the risk of heart disease, and Cheerios may a breakfast delight, but can't cereal just be advertised as something that tastes good, even if two of the Cheerios varieties are shameless imitations Kellogg's Froot Loops and Apple Jacks - a couple of the best-tasting bowl-and-milk horrors ever created? (See links below for the actual health claims, and why they're the bunk.)

Aa far as eating the new variety goes, I'd say the banana taste could be more pronounced, and I'm not sure the overall concept of putting banana in the cereal itself (rather than into the bowl with cereal, as has been done since Chiquita came up with the idea, nearly a century ago - the story of the development of bananas+cereal as a recipe is in my book) is a step in a good direction. Still, I rank the product pretty high on the breakfast taste scale. Bonus points for doing it without artificial flavors. If you like Cheerios, they're worth trying.

General Mills has a special Banana Nut Cheerios website, with a movie, nutritional info, recipes, and a 55-cents off coupon. There are also some "banana fun facts," some of which are - if not wrong - then poorly worded (like this one: "There is no such thing as a banana tree. Bananas grow on plants." I think what they mean to say is that bananas are an herb, or that bananas grow on what are basically stems.)

More about Banana Nut Cheerios (including coupon) here.

Crazy, hyped, manipulative nutritional claims about the cereal brand here. Info on why those claims are completely bogus here.

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Bonus breakfast suggestion - thinking about Cheerios for your kids? Consider that the vampiric occult treat, also from General Mills, contains THE SAME AMOUNT OF ADDED SUGAR - twelve grams per 27 gram serving - than at least two Cheerios varieties - Apple Cinnamon and Frosted (Banana Nut comes close, with nine grams.) And much of Count Chocula's sugar is delivered in the optimal form of marshmallows. Manufacturer's nutritional claims for Count Chocula: none. Suggested nutritional claim: feed this to your kids and they will grow up to be INTERESTING. More on the demonic dark lord of daybreak delight here.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Exclusive: Developer of Disease-Resistant, Supermarket Banana Explains How it Works

Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT

The race to save our supermarket banana from disease is on, and a scientist in Australia - aided by a grant from the Gates Foundation - says that he and his team have developed a genetically modified version of the fruit (the term they use is "biofortification") that successfully resists the blight that has destroyed much of the banana industry in his country, and that threatens the world's entire banana crop. I interviewed James Dale for my book. Back then, he talked about how difficult banana breeding is. That remains the case - but this development is a major breakthrough, though he estimates that it will be as long as decade before the fruit he's working with truly proves its worth.

I first wrote about the breakthrough last year. Here's a more extensive interview with Dale that I conducted in January. In it, he gives details on the project - and where it might be going.

DK: Panama Disease is highly transmittable – I wonder about how you’re able to actually test these resistant plants that you’ve developed, especially in a country that’s already got a huge problem with the disease. Aren’t you and the Australian banana industry concerned that – since you have to expose these plants to PD – you might inadvertently let something escape?

JAMES: Needless to say, there would be concern about doing those challenges even in the glasshouse. So yes, the bio-security people are very, very concerned about this. Our tests are either going to be conducted where the disease already exists – in the Northern Territory – but also in Southeast Asia. Right now, we’re negotiating where to conduct those trials.

DK: So right now, you’ve only tested against Tropical Race 4 in the greenhouse?

JAMES: No, we haven’t tested against Race 4 in the greenhouse – we’ve so far only tested against Race 1 in the greenhouse.

Note: Panama Disease has different variations. Tropical Race 1 is the “original” version that killed the first commercial banana, the Gros Michel. The Cavendish – our banana – replaced that fruit in the 1950s and 1960s because it was immune to Race 1. Tropical Race 4 appeared in the 1990s, shocking the banana world because it affected the Cavendish, and beginning the race to find a remedy for the blight. The technical name for these disease is "Fusarium Wilt."

DK: Would resistance to Race 4 necessarily be carried over?

JAMES: We believe so – the hypothesis is that there’s no reason to think that the genes we’re working with in Cavendish won’t provide resistance to Race 4.

DK: Cavendish is already resistant to Race 1 - that's why it was adopted - so how is that a legitmate test?

JAMES: We have generated transgenic Lady finger expressing the resistance genes. Lady finger is susceptible to both Race 1 and tropical Race 4. We have challenged these transgenic lines in the glasshouse with Race 1 and have identified a number of highly resistant lines. The resistance strategy is not targeted to Race 1 but is targeted to inhibiting a basic infection process of Fusarium. Therefore, we believe there is a reasonable chance that the genes that provide resistance to Race 1 in Lady finger will also provide resistance to Race 4 in Cavendish. But we still need to do the challenges.

Obama's Pick For Attorney General Has Banana Problems

Eric Holder, Chiquita defender and Obama pick for U.S. Attorney General.

I've gotten dozens of emails in the 48 hours since Eric Holder emerged as President-elect Barack Obama's choice as U.S. Attorney General. To summarize: Holder is a former deputy U.S. attorney general in the Clinton administration who has been described as a "long-time Obama advisor." He was part of the committee that helped Obama choose Joe Biden as vice-presidential nominee. Holder would be the nation's first African-American attorney general. He's currently in private practice with the law firm of Covington & Burling, which is where the banana trouble begins.

Here's the key part of the Wikipedia page on Holder that explains it (I urge you to read the whole entry, which summarizes his entire career.)

"In 2004, Holder helped negotiate an agreement with the Justice Department for Chiquita Brands International in a case that involved Chiquita's payment of "protection money" to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a group on the U.S. government's list of terrorist organizations. In the agreement, Chiquita's officials pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $25 million. Holder represents Chiquita in the civil action that grew out of this criminal case."

The civil action mentioned in the article is a lawsuit on behalf of the families of seven missionaries who were murdered by Colombia's United Self Defense Forces (AUC). The suit alleges that since Chiquita was funding the AUC at the times the killings occurred, the banana company bears some responsibility for them.

I agree, and I've blogged about the issue numerous times. Here are links to some of the previous entries:

• In May, the CBS News program "60 Minutes" did a segment on the Colombia-Chiquita story. It included an interview with Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre. Read (and view the interview) here.  

• Here's the entry about the lawsuits that Holder and his law firm, Covington and Burling, are defending Chiquita against. 

• The families of U.S. victims of the AUC aren't the only ones suing Chiquita. Similar cases have been brought by 400 Colombian families. My November, 2007 entry on is here.

So what to do about this?

Silence isn't an option. Anyone who reads this blog knows where my political sympathies lie. I was, and remain, and Obama supporter. I know that the Washington merry-go-round - and especially when it comes to attorneys - makes for strange bedfellows. I don't know if I'd excuse the fact that Holder represented Chiquita in negotiating the terms of the fine it paid to the Justice Department. But I know that representing the company against the families of the AUC victims is inexcusable. As my colleague Jason Glaser - whose upcoming documentary, "The Affected," directly illustrates how dangerous the lives of banana workers in Latin America are, even when they don't have to deal with terrorism - notes, "isn't it about time we have a lawyer in [the U.S. attorney general's] position from a plaintiff's firm [italics mine], someone who may have at one time served the interests of a mammal as opposed to a corporate entity?"

The liberal/progressive community is going to do a lot of hand-wringing about this. It needs to do more. We elected Obama - and we need to keep him honest. To fail to do so would be to write him the same kind of blank check that supporters of the previous administration handed over to the officials they elected. Holder owes us an explanation, though I don't see how any words from him could be convincing - especially to those in Latin America whose trust we have already lost. Getting Chiquita to agree  to agree to full disclosure and restitution would be an appropriate way for Holder to spend his remaining weeks in the private sector - and a good start.

So here's what to do.

First, learn about Holder - not just about his actions regarding Chiquita, but his entire career. Decide for yourself whether he deserves a pass. Then, use the network - the one we used so successfully to get Obama elected. Blog, Twitter, and email the links about Holder that you think are most important, good or bad (my Twitter handle is "soulbarn", if you want to follow my posts.) The point is to make sure the information gets out there. The most important thing we can do right now is establish, early, that transparency is one of the things we voted for on November 4th.  Our ability to spread this information quickly, and spark a public debate about it - rather than use this information simply in a destructive way - is key.  

Here are some good places to find out more about Holder, and to discuss the nomination. I invite you to add more links in the comment thread.

• Dan Kovalik, in the Huffington Post (11/18/08), not mincing words. Headline: "Lawyer for Chiquita in Colombia Death Squad Case May be Next U.S. Attorney General." 

• Discussion thread at Democratic Underground forums. 

• Slate's "Bananas of Mass Destruction" (2007), including Chiquita's court filings. 

• "The Trouble With Eric Holder," from The Nation, 11/18/08. Not just bananas - Holder, according to the story, also has some Patriot Act issues. 

• "Preliminary Facts and Thoughts About Eric Holder," from Salon, 11/18/08. A still-being-updated, roundup on Holder's dealings, positive and negative. 

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Online Course in Banana Quarantine Techniques

Philippine Lacatan banana tree at market - from the extensive and fascinating Market Manilla website. The Lacatan is the Philippine's "comfort food" banana, and one of the world's most delicious.

One of the most frustrating elements of fighting banana disease (or any disease) is that quarantine actually works - but only in theory. For over a century, attempts to isolate infected bananas from healthy ones have been attempted, and failed. These efforts have, in fact, generally made things worse, because they've often been accompanied by denial on the part of banana producers that the problem needs to be attacked on other levels, as well (or denial that quarantine is mostly ineffective.)

But clean farming can make a difference: it can boost crop yields, and slow the spread of disease - crucially important to subsistence farmers, for whom even cutting a percentage of loss can be lifesaving. And there have been considerable successes in some recent quarantine programs. Pakistani officials are now offering a pilot program in managing banana diseases that's different from traditional efforts, which have usually involved in the field training. This one is all-electronic. In my book, I describe how ambitious field programs in Pakistan failed in the early part of this decade. I don't know whether on-site instruction works better than these self-paced versions - but the Philippines is both a banana paradise (with huge plantations and breeding variety) and a center of banana disease, so the effort is absolutely necessary.

Here's how the course introduces itself to first-time participants:

"Have you experienced tremendous yield loss in your banana due to diseases? Have you tried several methods to combat these, yet all proved ineffective? Well, worry no more for you just found the right niche that’ll shun away your farming woes. Congratulations! You are about to start the journey towards achieving a high quality, disease-free banana. Welcome to the online course on Managing Common Diseases in Banana!"

I guess every school needs cheerleaders. Here's a direct link (registration required) to the nine-part program, which is called "Managing Common Disease in Banana."

Banana Companies Rat Each Other Out

The biggest news item I avoid in this blog are banana trade wars. That's because it would take me thousands and thousands of words to explain why the U.S., Europe, and the big banana companies have been fighting for years over who gets to sell bananas where. There have been resolutions that have led to no resolutions, problems that have led to more problems, and lots of ugly behavior on both sides. Suffice it to say that the whole thing is corrupt, and that none of it really affects whether or not bananas show up on store shelves (though it does affect where those bananas come from, and prices, as you'll see, below.) The problem is that when you enter the labyrinth, you just can't find your way back. Sorry.

But sometimes, I just have to say something. Last week, Dole and Del Monte - Dole's the second biggest banana company in the world, and Del Monte, depending on how you count, is probably third or fourth - were fined a total of $83 million by the European Union for conspiring to fix banana prices in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden. These fines were good. Price-fixing is bad, and I'm always happy - we should all be happy - when banana company skullduggery is exposed.

The interesting thing about all this is who turned the Dole and Del Monte in: it was Chiquita, their rival, and the world's biggest banana company.

This time, I won't comment, other than to refer you to the source of the picture, above.

Insane Banana Diets Can Also Raise Prices - Which Proves Something

Lots of folks emailed me news items on this. Japan has gone nuts for the "Morning Banana Diet," which promises to help you lose weight with this formula: you start in the morning with a breakfast of bananas and room-temperature water, then eat whatever you want - other than desert - the rest of the day. You can't eat later than six in the evening. you don't need to exercise, and people are going nuts. A half-dozen books on the diet have become best sellers, and the price of the fruit has shot up to over $3.00 per pound (more than quadruple what we pay in the U.S., and well over triple the average price in a Tokyo supermarket.)

The backstory? An opera singer told a talk show she'd lost over 30 pounds on the banana diet. The craze began from there.

Happy dieter, from a Reuters pic that accompanied a Time magazine story on the diet.

A spokesperson for Dole - the nation's largest banana importer (second largest in the world) - told Great Britain's Daily Mail that this was "the first time bananas have been so scarce. Right now, we are finding ourselves unable to meet demand."

There was an earlier banana diet craze, in 1995, that began with the U.S. release of a book called "The Amazingly Simple Banana Diet," by Clifford Thurlow (who also wrote a biography of Salvador Dali.) I couldn't find any details on the actual program, sadly, or whether Japan's morning banana regime was similar to it.

Does the diet work? Sure. If you eat fewer calories than you take in, then you'll lose weight. If you skip your normal breakfast, and substitute a banana; and cut out alcohol and desserts - both of which might reasonably be assumed to be part of the diet of a person who might want to drop a few kilos, you'll accomplish that goal. The books claim that the diet achieves weight loss through a lot of metabolic bunkum, which would be nice. In the 1920s, American banana companies hired armies of doctors to promote all kinds of health claims about the fruit, but even then, they pretty much stuck to the truth.

And even at three bucks a pound, you'll still save money, after you weigh the price of what you've foregone, versus the single banana you've slotted in per day.

To get a little serious: as I've said in the past, the price of bananas is key to the fruit's success - they are the cheap fruit. Things like disease and weather threaten to raise costs to point at which the fruit returns to its "genuine" state - an expensive, tropical rarity. I've advocated, as a solution to any future banana crisis, that importers look into providing a portfolio of banana varieties - as those same companies do with apples and citrus - that would diversify the crop and offer the fruit along a spectrum of tastes and prices. In its own ridiculous way, the Japan craze has proven that consumers will pay more for bananas if they that the fruit offers something more than just a partnership with corn flakes.

Ugandan Comfort Food Championships Underway. Your Local Market Next?

Matooke flour, courtesy Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme

Steaming banana leaves for matooke. Full video sequence here.

There's a knock-down, drag-out contest going on right now in Kampala - held as a precursor to next month's World Banana Congress in Kenya - to see which chef makes the best Matooke, a Ugandan banana dish which I describe in my book as "the macaroni and cheese of the African highlands."

The contest began with over 100 chefs offering their recipes made with tooke, a flour made from East African Highland Plantains. Nine are now left standing, and they'll face off on October 5, serving their creations at a Presidential banquet to be held at the Kampala Serena Hotel.

Here's a description of the dish, which I refer to in my book, and which is more commonly referred to, as matooke. Interesting side note - I've mentioned it several times here, but Uganda is so dependent on bananas - many people get up to 90% of their daily calories from the fruit, eating up to 900 pounds of it a year, compared to about 25 pounds of it here in the United States - that in some small villages, the word for food, banana, and this signature dish are actually all the same. The description is from the Uganda Tourism website.

"One popular local dish is matooke (bananas of the plantain type) which are cooked boiled in a sauce of peanuts, fresh fish, meat or entrails. Matooke really goes with any relish, except that the best and most respectable way the Baganda cook it is to tie up the peeled fingers into a bundle of banana leaves which is then put in a cooking pan with just enough water to steam the leaves. When properly ready and tender, the bundle is removed and squeezed to get a smooth soft and golden yellow mash, served hot with all the banana leaves around to keep it hot. In Buganda, the food production process revolves around the banana tree. Tender banana tree shoots are removed from the plant and singed over fire to make a fine foil into which chunks of pork or beef are tied up and steamed on top of a bundle of bananas. This style of cooking preserves all the flavours and cooks up food like a pressure cooker, if not better. Dry banana leaves are used like bandages when bundles of matooke are being wrapped up for steaming. Strips and chunks cut from the banana tree stem can be used as a foundation at the bottom of the cooking pan so as to avoid the boiling water touching the bundle of the matooke being steamed.

I wish I was in Kenya to taste the gourmet versions, which are probably not entrail-laden. The dish, which can also be prepared with banana flour, may be coming to stores near you, according to a report published by the New Vision Ugandan news service. "We believe there is a huge market locally and globally for value added matooke products,” said. Dr. Florence Isabirye, director of the Ugandan Presidential Initiative on Banana Industrial Development Programme (PIBID.)

Here's a recipe for matooke. You can use green plantains. It won't be the same, but you'll get the idea.

UN Program Claims Success in Battle Against Deadliest Disease

Ugandan Banana with wilting disease (courtesy UN FAO)

BXW (banana xanthomonas wilt) is probably the worst disease facing the worldwide banana crop today. Fast-moving and incurable, it threatens Africa's vital subsistence bananas, and has been spreading rapidly through the regions where people rely on the fruit for as much as eighty percent of their daily nutrition.

A report issued this week by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization says that a pilot education program in Africa that trained farmers in clean production techniques - quarantine measures designed to isolate farms from each other to stop the spread of the disease - effectively reduced transmission to zero percent.

“Today you do not find banana wilt disease in any of the districts where the field schools have been established, which were at one time the front line hot spots in this effort,” an FAO official was quoted as saying.

This is a major development. Quarantine and farmer education programs can be successful, but they're often tough to implement. Stopping BXW in Uganda (the term FAO uses is BBW, for "Banana Bacterial Wilt") will go a long way toward ensuring security in a region that desperately needs a reliable food supply.

There's a detailed article and more pictures here.

Here's an earlier posting on BXW.

African Banana Roundup; Chiquita's plans and Kenyan Entrepreneurship

Traditional banana transport in Africa. Picture from youngrobv's photostream at flickr.

There was a great story in New Agriculturist a while back - before I went on vacation - and I was a little remiss in not highlighting it. It actually contained some Chiquita news that could be seen as positive, as well as a few other interesting developments in the world of African bananas (Africa is the place where bananas are most important - in many nations on the continent, people rely on the fruit for up to eighty percent of their daily caloric intake. So fighting banana disease there is hugely important.)

The most interesting thing was the Chiquita-related item that reported the company's desire to source Cavendish bananas from new plantations in Angola and Mozambique. I've reported on this before, but there was new detail here. The first bananas are expected to be produced by 2010, the article said, with a goal of deriving up to 30% of the company's exports for the European market from Africa. That's a mammoth amount of bananas, and a first for Africa, which barely exports any of fruit right now.

There are pluses and minuses to this. The plus is economic development, which is definitely needed in that part of Africa. The minus is that the development offered by the banana industry isn't always positive (though it is generally the same as the development offered by other multinationals.) There's a chance for Chiquita to build a new kind of economic model here, and the question is whether the governments of the nations hosting the company are going to look at the example of the banana industry in Latin America as a cautionary tale, or as a template.

Chiquita, too, has a chance to experiment with the banana supply chain - which is something it will have to do as the industry goes through a necessary transformation as it reacts to advancing banana disease. I also wonder whether Chiquita is prepared for another possibility: that its crop in Africa will be exposed to new disease. Panama Disease is already a problem in parts of Africa, and another newly-emerged and incurable disease, banana xanthomonas wilt, (BXW) has been devastating the fruit across the African highlands. BXW spreads faster than Panama Disease, and it does (link is to a PDF file) affect the Cavendish.

What's important to remember here is that the banana industry, unlike in Latin America, where it is waiting for disease to arrive, in this case, it is bringing fruit to the disease. This is exactly how the new outbreak of Panama Disease that I write about in my book began.

Again, there's more to it than a corporation may be able - or is set up - to consider.

Microbiologist/entrepreneur Ann Muli. Photo: New Agriculturist/Zablon Odihambo.

The second piece of news is the emergence of another, smaller banana business operation: a Kenyan company called Mimea has recently begun offering tissue-cultured bananas as a commercial product ("Tissue Culture" means that the initial banana plants are cultivated in the lab; they arrive at the plantation disease-free.) I'm not aware of any other business venture doing anything like this in Africa. Mimea is also unique in that it is owned by a woman - microbiologist-turned-entrepreneur Anne Muli.

The company produces sterile seedlings and initial growth material for other crops - primarily flowers - but the extension into bananas is exciting, as it helps address Africa's technological and economic development through local ownership. That, to me, has the potential to be more important, in the long run, than Chiquita's massive venture. New Agriculturist ran an excellent profile of Muli last March.

There should be more African banana news in a few weeks, following October's World Banana Conference in Kenya.

Chiquita Acknowledges Panama Disease as Threat

Panama Disease-ravaged plantation in Asia (from Plant Health Progress.)

In an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer, Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre - for the first time - publicly acknowledged the existence of Panama Disease (the incurable malady that wiped out the world's banana crop in the first half of the 20th century, and that has devastated much of Asia over the past two decades) - in relation to his company's mainstay product, though he downplayed the threat to the point of barely admitting it existed.

The story is headlined "New banana disease poses threat: How serious is open to debate." In it, Aguirre described the disease as "limited," and asserted that - when the disease arrives in Latin America - quarantine measures would "pre-empt and prepare" the advance and effects of the malady. I was interviewed for the story, and I disagreed, pointing out that such measures had failed most everywhere they've been tried in the past.

Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, from the Cincinnati Enquirer. Photo by Steven M. Herppich.

I was glad to see that the reporter, James Pilcher, also contacted Randy Ploetz, the scientist who is probably the world's best authority on the fungus. Ploetz is less grim and more circumspect than I am (as well as a lot smarter than me), but he's still way down on the fencing-your-farm idea: international quarantines will not work," he said. "If it did get over to Latin America somehow, it is almost impossible to stop. When and if that will happen. No one can say for sure."

I'm quoted in the story as saying that the Cavendish banana is a "dead end." That's something I've come to believe even more since I wrote the book. None of us - not the CEO of the world's largest banana company; not a dedicated scientist; nor an author who has books to sell - knows when Panama Disease will hit. But what I suspect we all know is that the Cavendish is indeed a biological (and therefore, ultimately, a commercial) cul-de-sac. Breeding a new version of the banana we all eat is nearly impossible. It is totally sterile. It produces no seeds. (Each Cavendish is a genetic duplicate of the other. That's why each gets sick when the other does.) This makes it a poor candidate as a parent to any new banana, except if genetic engineering is used, a technique Chiquita and most consumers reject.

The answer is diversity: a robust banana aisle with four, five, or six different kinds of fruit. Those varieties are out there. The technology needed to deliver them to market - to keep them fresh and intact from the places they're grown to the places they're sold - would be considerable. But it be worth the investment. Right now, at my local Safeway, I can buy four kinds of peaches, five kinds of apples, four kinds of lettuce, and more. Why not bananas?

When Panama Disease struck and destroyed the earlier breed of banana that our grandparents ate, Chiquita executives claimed that they knew how to protect their fields from the disease. They spent years saying so. They were wrong. There has never been a technical solution to Panama Disease. In 1960, as the last plantations were succumbing to the old blight, Chiquita was on the verge of bankruptcy. It had spent decades denying that there was a problem. It then wasted more time trying to find an answer using a means that didn't work. It came close to destroying its franchise product. Chiquita can make the same mistake again. It has already taken willful steps down that path, and it doesn't even know it. Though Aguirre is right in saying that the danger has yet to arrive, the danger will arrive, and the solution Aguirre outlines absolutely will not work.

My key takeway from the Enquirer story: Chiquita acknowledges a problem on the horizon - and it has publicly embraced a strategy that cannot work.

As far as diversity is concerned, Aguirre said that the company has "been working for a number of years on different opportunities to grow different bananas."

OK, readers. I am warning you right now: RANT ALERT!!!!

I can't stand this kind of PR-speak. What the heck did the Chiquita CEO even say just there? I mean, these are bananas. Bananas! India, the Philippines, the South Pacific, and even Brazil offer dozens of wonderful banana types that might delight and intrigue American consumers. I've tasted them and they're freakin' AWESOME. They taste BETTER than ours. Haagen-Dazs to bucket vanilla better! Don't "work" for "a number of years" on "opportunities." Just grow some danged fruit and sell it to us! You're CHIQUITA! Your JOB is to sell us bananas!

JIMINY CRICKET!

OK, I'm feeling better now. The point is that there are plenty of ways to get Panama Disease mitigated before it gets here, and the first step is to not put all of our bananas in the Cavendish basket.

One more thing: for years before the Gros Michel - the old banana - went functionally extinct, Chiquita executives not only denied that there was a problem, but they also denied that the Cavendish was a solution. It was a competitor that came up with the proper techniques needed to grow and ship the Cavendish that made it a viable supermarket banana. That competitor was Dole, whose market share tripled and has barely declined since. A new competitor, with a new banana, may be waiting for Chiquita as this round of Panama Disease emerges - and this time around, Chiquita may not be so lucky as to be so unlucky.

Note: For context on this story, you might want to read the magazine article my book is based on, in the entry above.

Banana Prices in Supermarkets: Prices Still Rising

The series continues. August is a slow banana news month, and I'm still traveling, this time in New Hampshire (in the northeastern U.S.) Prices are generally lower here than in most of the country. Still, banana prices are high - and in one case, higher than I've ever seen them. The result? Chiquita's profits, up again. And these images:

This one above is from a supermarket in Colebrook, New Hampshire, a tiny town near the Canadian border. Note the regular price of 79 cents a pound. While that's what I pay normally in Los Angeles, the price is exceptionally high for a non-city grocery.

This one's from the Beans & Greens farm stand in Gilford, New Hampshire, August 18th. Record-setting!

Market Advertises Banana Type as 'Cavendish'

I took this pic with my mobile July 24 at the Whole Foods on Houston St. in lower Manhattan. I've never seen a U.S. retailer get so specific.

Report: First Field Test of Genetically Modified Cavendish

Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT

Cavendish is our supermarket banana - the one that's under threat from the newly-remerged Panama Disease (see here for more info.) The Cavendish banana is absolutely seedless and sterile, so it cannot be bred conventionally; the only sway to ensure its future as a commercial fruit would be through genetic engineering (the alternative would be to allow the Cavendish to die out and replace it with a different - and as yet unidentified - banana variety.) Now, according to a news report from the Australia Broadcasting Company, a project spearheaded by Australian scientist James Dale, who runs the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, has begun the field test of such fruit - the first time lab-modified Cavendish have ever been put to large-scale outdoor trial. The test, the story says, will be "to improve the nutrient content and disease resistance of Cavendish bananas."

Australia is in desperate banana straits right now, having lost much of its crop to poor weather and a subsequent Panama Disease attack. The field tests are partially being funded by a grant from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Dale, by the way, prefers to use the term "biofortification" to describe genetically engineered fruit - one of a long list of proposed terms for such processes, including "genetically modified," "transgenic," "GM," "GMO," and others. The desire to come up with a less-scary name for lab-developed foods is understandable, but misguided. The real problem is that people have been misled into thinking that all genetic modification of foods is terrifying. The responsibility for this comes partially from big agricultural companies who have behaved terribly when they have introduced modified products - but also from consumer groups who oppose all forms of genetic modification while failing to understand even the basics of the science behind it. )

Comment: The Australia trials will likely horrify some folks - possibly because earlier tests of genetic bananas weren't focused on supermarket fruit, and this brings the prospect of a so-called "Frankenbanana" closer to home. But genetic engineering isn't an absolutely scary prospect, and this kind of work is needed with bananas, both because they're a vital subsistence food, and because they're such a weak organism. And the Cavendish is a very safe banana to experiment on: with no seeds or pollen, there is zero - absolutely zero - chance of it the kind of cross-crop contamination occurring that we've seen with engineered corn. Bananas need a lot of help to survive - and the lab is one of the places that help is going to come from. Not that the Down Under effort is entirely altruistic, I'm sure: if a Panama Disease-resistant banana can be built by Dale and his team, they'll also have built a gold mine.

This is Real: Banana-Smuggling Ring Smashed

Chiquita-owned banana boat, c. 1932

Newsweek's July 12th issue reported that a boatload of Ecuadorian fruit intercepted by Italian authorities two years ago was part of a larger smuggling ring that realized money was to be made in black-market fruit on the continent, and not - as was originally thought - a one-off incident (perhaps a botched cocaine smuggling operation, where somebody forgot to stuff the fruit full of the drug.) An investigation completed this week reported on the business:

"The trade is big enough now that the Italian authorities are becoming concerned about lost revenue. When officials completed a two-year probe into illicit fruit smuggling this week, they found the trade represented losses of more $80 million in customs fees and more than $2 million in unpaid sales tax on bananas alone."

The reason? Bananas are highly taxed in Europe, the result of trade laws that favor fruit grown in former colonies, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean. So fruit from Ecuador - the world's largest banana exporter - comes under restrictive levies. U.S. based-banana companies have been fighting over the taxes for years, but the issue rages on. Chiquita recently adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy by announcing it would open new plantations in Africa.

For consumers, the smuggled bananas turned out to be a good deal. investigators helped uncover the extent of the plot by visiting grocers and noticing extraordinarily low prices for the fruit. "We kept wondering how they [the markets] can be selling these Ecuadorean bananas so cheap," one said. No longer, he added: "That certainly won't be the case now."

More on banana trade wars here.

More on Chiquita in Africa here.

Troubling Times for Supermarket Bananas

This sign was spotted at the QFC market in the Wallingford area of Seattle, on 45th St. Reader Mac reports that there were also some "gross" looking red bananas present.

Varietal Banana Coming to U.S. markets?

For 100 years, the big banana growers have said it couldn't be done: bring a better-tasting, non-commodity version of the fruit to the American shopper. The reasons? Bananas have to be cheap; they need to be grown in massive quantities; they need to be shipped and processed in ways that require least-common-denominator techniques that lead to a product that's good - but nowhere near as tasty as some local varieties or even a standard fruit (the breed we eat is called a Cavendish) eaten locally.

I recently spoke to a fruit importer named Jose Ubilla who hopes to change that. His family runs a small Nicaraguan banana plantation, and began importing fruit under the Coquimba brand name in mid-June (the fruit is being marketed as "The Gourmet Banana.") Though the fruit is of the same Cavendish variety that you'll find in supermarkets everywhere, Ubilla says that the fruit he's selling are bigger, better tasting, and will arrive at markets in better condition that standard supermarket fruit than the Chiquita, Dole, and Bonita bananas you're used to seeing. The reason? Shorter shipping times and better handling: the fruit is babied on the tree, with each bunch picked at its individual point of readiness, and then shipped in carefully monitored containers: "You can't do it this way if you're handling large quantities of fruit," says Ubilla.

The fruit is currently being sold at a few farmers markets in Florida, so - being in Los Angeles - I haven't had a chance to sample it. But Ubilla is working with a California distributor, as well, and promises me a taste - so stay tuned; I'll be updating with an on-the-spot report.

Comment: there's no doubt that a fresh Cavendish is better tasting (and has a less mushy texture) than a less fresh one, and shipping in small quantities with more care makes all the difference. I can't tell you how many letters I get asking how it is possible that the bananas folks have eaten in Central America can be the same variety as the one they get in supermarkets here. If the Coquimba fruit performs as promised, it should be closer to that straight-from-the-plantation experience.

The challenge Coquimba faces is marketing. Consumers are used to treating bananas as a commodity. Are they going to be willing to pay more for a banana that might not look all that different than the ones they're used to? I love Ubilla's idea of selling at farmers markets - a place bananas have usually been absent from.

But here's what I'd really love to see: Coquimba to succeed so much that it goes one step beyond Cavendish - and gets into different banana varieties entirely. With hundreds of delicious non-Cavendish banana types out there, why not approach the fruit the way apple producers did a decade ago when they introduced today's plethora of varieties to a market that featured only the bland red delicious and granny smith? Check out these articles (here and here) on the bananas of India. If only we could get a few of those into our stores!

Would you be willing to pay a little more for a fresher-from-the-tree, better-tasting banana? Add your comment below.

Banana Juice Research in India is conducted by Nuclear Energy Experts

Atomic banana juice from India

This is really more than you'll ever want to know about extracting juice from bananas, but it is interesting, because the folks at India's Bhaba Atomic Research Centre have figured out ways to squeeze a lot more juice from the fruit than previously was thought to be possible. I don't know why the nuclear scientists are spending time doing this, though my (absolutely uninformed) guess is that atomic research involves advanced centrifuges, and so do the juice extraction techniques described on the linked pages. A second guess might be more political: India's atomic energy program is a huge source of national pride and strategic military importance. Bananas are also a source of national pride - and are of huge importance to the national diet. Maybe it isn't so silly that top minds and resources would be devoted to working on both in a single facility?

Or maybe these guys just have a lot of time on their hands and got thirsty.

A Visit to the New Home of the International Banana Museum

Top Banana Glen Speer

A humble exterior, four miles south of Interstate 15.

I finally got a chance to visit the new home of the International Banana Museum (previous posts here and here) earlier this month. It was awesome! I just missed Ken Banister - the museum's founder, who moved his banana collection from the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena to the high desert town of Hesperia, California, about a year ago, but I found myself in the able hands of Glen Speer, whose business card lists him this way:

GLEN SPEER

Genuine Antique Christian Person

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, CAN"T REMEMBER

Free Advice!

Top Banana - Banana Museum

Hesperia, CA

His credentials turned out to be impeccable and true. Glen graciously showed me around, recommended that I have lunch at the omelette place across the street - over 100 types of egg-based dishes - and encouraged me to take lots of pictures, which I did. As I was leaving, another local told me to quit with the snapshots: "You'll make his head even bigger!" But from the looks of things, Glen has a lot to be proud of.

More on the museum, including additional pictures, after the jump.

Heroic Clerk Saves Store from Banana Attack

Battles Banana-Wielding Thug.

In my book, I note that one observer described the banana as a "weapon of conquest" in Latin America. This doesn't apply in Maryland, where a would-be thief attempted to use the fruit to rob a 7-Eleven - and was denied by a brave clerk.

Incredibly (or maybe not so incredibly), this isn't the first time this has happened - and the last time, the guy got eighteen months in the hoosegow for his malfeasance (third item down.)

Chiquita is Motley Fool's "Worst Stock in the World"

At least for today - Monday, June 18. The reasons include the company's dismal forecast for the third quarter (a "significant loss," it told investors); the payments it was revealed to have made to Colombian terrorists; and worries about the Panama Disease fungus arriving in Latin America. The investment site specifically takes Chiquita to task for failing to diversify its banana offerings on supermarket shelves, noting that the disease-threatened Cavendish is "the only Banana that Chiquita sells." The conclusion? "Big Trouble."

Here's what Chiquita needs to do: figure out how to sell more bananas than the Cavendish. Figure out a way to make transporting and growing them much more environmentally friendly. And move toward fair trade principles, which I think are more important - at the moment - than organics.

More here.

SPECIAL REPORT: Urgent threat to Africa's Bananas - news update, how to help

Plants killed by BXW, arguably today's deadliest banana disease.

Close up: bacterial discharge from a banana plant.

Note to readers: This is a long post, based on news reports from the past week. I think it's important - please, if you can, read it, and pass it on. Thanks.

In the months since I've been publishing this blog - and in the now six months since my book has come out - this is probably the most serious and important item I've posted. In the past week, new reports of the spread of what is the most deadly banana disease facing the crop right now - banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) - have appeared in the African news media.

For the first time, the disease has appeared in Kenya. BXW moves easily - it can be transmitted in dirt, by people, on tools, or even by birds. It has so far appeared in the Teso, Busia, Malaba, Chakol, and Busia districts of the nation, all near the Ugandan border. Once it shows up in a banana plantation, it is likely spread by insects.

In Uganda, meanwhile, the disease has become so widespread that yields on banana farms have reached dangerously low levels. Acres and acres of crops have been lost, creating a cascade of economic losses in a trading system that spreads from the tiniest villages to Uganda's cities, all based on the transport and trade of bananas.

The urgency of this cannot be overstated. Uganda and the nations surrounding it absolutely depend on bananas as a staple foodstuff. Millions rely on bananas for survival. And the spread of BXW into Kenya is yet another indicator that this deadly disease is on the march. As with Panama Disease - the wilting fungus that threatens our banana, the Cavendish - BXW (a bacterial malady) is incurable. The difference between the two is that BXW moves faster and threatens, right now, food supplies in nations with fragile governments.

What's to be done? Two things. And I'm going to say some stuff that might disturb that regular readers of this blog, especially those who know that I take a very hard line when it comes to corporate skullduggery directed banana workers in South and Central America. In this case, I'm going to veer away from what is traditionally seen as a related "socially responsible" stance.

FIRST, banana diversity. In order to mitigate the spread of disease, the number of kinds of bananas being grown needs to be increased. But there's a real disconnect in the world of food security - that means the organizations that help manage and alleviate hunger - when it comes to bananas. A lot of them don't know how important bananas are; those that do don't pay a lot of attention to how important funding the preservation of banana diversity (and banana research in general) is. There's just not enough time or money being spent on bananas compared to other staple crops. And let's not even get into whether or not the big banana companies care to fund research that might recognize the importance of saving the sister breeds of the one they make billions on: many - if not most - banana executives don't even know that subsistence bananas exist (or that they might help in reverse, since they could contain genetic material that could help save the Cavendish, which is also threatened by disease.

SECOND, genetic engineering: It is time for the general public to recognize that working at the DNA level is not always a corporate trojan horse into destroying local agriculture and contaminating the environment. This isn't all about Monsanto. While consumers in the suburbs and Whole Foods stores protest against all GMO foods - while barely knowing what GMO is - they bluntly prevent out legitimate public research that might stop hunger. Time learn that everything has nuance, the disease that are killing the bananas: they work in just two modes: off - and on.

About the images and BXW: the first shot shows a plantation that has been destroyed by BXW. The leaves of the banana plant have turned black and yellow, and then wilted altogether. Without leaves, the banana plant dies. Another key point: in village agriculture, the death of a banana tree can mean a cascade of disaster in a family's diet, because other staple foods grow in the shade the tree creates. The second image shows bacterial material oozing from the plant itself.

Even if you think genetic engineering sucks, you should write to Fernando Aguirre, the CEO of Chiquita, and ask him to fund global banana research. This is the address:

Chiquita

250 E. Fifth Street

Cincinnati OH 45202 USA

You will probably get a form letter in reply unless you include a line in there that says something like: "I challenge you not to include a form letter in reply." You might also include printouts from the below links, or a printout of this blog entry.

Here's a link on the Kenya spread. Here's a link on the Uganda crisis. Here's a link to Bioversity International, the group that coordinates banana research worldwide. You can learn a lot more there. Things are really moving quickly now when it comes to saving the banana - but they aren't hopeless. The keys, again: Diversity. Conservation. Research.

Images via the British Society for Plant Pathology

Australia to tax bananas starting July 1

These are Australian things.

Australia's banana crop has been devastated by bad weather and Panama Disease. Now, the country is going to be imposing a AUS 1.7 cent-per-kilo (1.5 cents US) levy on the fruit. It will be applied at the wholesale level, then passed on to the consumer, starting July 1.

Nicky Singh, president of the Australian Banana Growers Council, said that revenues from the tax would raise $5 million AUS (4.7 million US) to fund "promotions, research and development, and plant health programs."

The imposition of a single-foodstuff tax is a big development, and another indication of how serious the problem of banana disease is. Australia, as I've noted before, is becoming a world epicenter for banana problems. 85% of the country's crop was destroyed by a cyclone in 2007, leaving the remaining fruit vulnerable to Panama Disease, which began to spread aggressively last year, despite a quarantine program designed to stop the malady.

News report on banana tax here.

Earlier Australia report here.

Read my article on Panama Disease in "The Scientist"

The most controversial part of my book is my assertion that biotech is key to saving the banana. I came by this assertion with a lot of difficulty - initially believing that most genetic engineering in our food supply was a bad thing. But, as usual, the issue isn't black and white. With bananas, the shade of gray is especially green.

Read the piece here.

Wired magazine: Frankenfoods, good; Hippie foods, bad?

First good. Second, not so good.

More or less, maybe, according to the May issue of the science/tech/culture publication, because:

GMO agriculture may have a smaller carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

Organics may have a larger carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

In my book, I note that the promise of organic bananas is far less than we'd wish it to be - and the potential of GM bananas has been so undervalued (and so feared) as to be a factor in creating hunger in banana-dependent populations worldwide, as well as contributing to the reduction of genetic diversity in the global banana crop.

.

LA Times on Banana Museum

Best banana picture ever - from the banana museum's website

Fake memoirist, real novelist, and - best of all - Oprah nemesis James Frey mentions Altadena banana museum; Los Angeles Times uses "banana expert" (me) to confirm that it exists (or existed; it has since moved to Hesperia, in the California high desert.)

About the picture: The proprietor of the museum, Ken Banister, has his shirt open at the belly. He is standing above a "banana club" logo, and next to a pile of bananas. A man who has burst into flames runs in front of them. To Ken's left a child on an adult's shoulders seems to stare in amazement. To the right, two adults laugh. The man closer to Banister seems to be applauding. All the way on the left side of the picture, a man in a pork pie hat and red knee socks, sitting and only half in frame, appears to be indifferent to the spectacle.

What in heck is going on here?

We Throw a Lot of Good Food Away

Image: New York Times

...including brown bananas, which have lots of uses, including banana bread.

Great story in the New York Times. More on the Wasted Food Blog.