Banana drama

Our too-perfect, genetically uniform bananas could create a perfect fruit crisis.

Thu, Mar 12 2009 at 3:57 PM EST

Bananas as we know them are in peril because they lack genetic diversity, but every time I stop at the banana section at Co-opportunity, I get a sweet surprise. Check out these ginormous organic bananas I got today. The bigger ones are 10 inches long, minus the stem!

Genetically uniform bananas could create a perfect fruit crisis.

Though they look freakishly large, I believe the ones I got are still Cavendish bananas — genetic duplicates of all other Cavendish bananas — pretty much the only type of banana sold in most U.S. supermarkets. The perfect sameness of all these bananas, however, could prove disastrous. Writes Dan Koeppel, author of Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, in a Popular Science article:

After 15,000 years of human cultivation, the banana is too perfect, lacking the genetic diversity that is key to species health. What can ail one banana can ail all. A fungus or bacterial disease that infects one plantation could march around the globe and destroy millions of bunches, leaving supermarket shelves empty.

We already know what that disease is going to be. “Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia,” Dan writes. “It has yet to hit Africa or Latin America, but most experts agree that it is coming.”

Banana disease could mean “massive destabilization,” especially in East Africa where people rely on bananas for nutrition and on banana plants to serve as cover crops for other plants. Of course, even banana farming as it is now is riddled with problems, from pesticide pollution to unfair labor practices….

To address that pending disaster, farmers and scientists are raising experimental breeds — and experimenting with genetic modification. Dan warns in a New York Times op-ed, however, that we may just have to change the way we think of and consume bananas.

“The Cavendish is the fruit equivalent of a fast-food hamburger: efficient to produce, uniform in quality and universally affordable,” Dan writes. But just as fast food’s getting a bad rap for its fatty, unhealthy content, bananas’ reputation’s changing. In a 2006 Q&A in Grist, one reader asked Jonathan Rosenthal, former top banana at fair trade fruit company Oke Banana: “Don’t you think it is strange that people will cheer your environmental efforts when you transport fruit a thousand miles?” Jonathan’s answer: “Yes I do” — with elaborations, of course. Dan’s thoughts on the issue are somewhat similar:

In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes…. But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.

Will bananas may soon become luxury items — more like gourmet chocolate than a big mac? Probably. In the meantime, I guess I’m still getting a bargain at 99 cents per pound of organic bananas. The best banana bargain’s at Trader Joe’s, according to Dan’s banana blog. Subscribe to his blog for continued fascinating banana tidbits –