Save the Banana, Save the World
The banana is more than simply a sweet, tasty, healthy and dependable fruit that many of us love to cut up on our cereal, blend into a smoothie, or eat on the go...
Even though, quite remarkably, there are over 1000 types of banana in the world, the commercial industry grows only one: the Cavendish, currently the world’s Top Banana. Such a ‘monoculture’ system: fields and fields of identical plants all lined up in a row, keeps the infrastructure simple and provides an economy of scale that allows us to have cheap, plentiful bananas, year round. But it is biological madness. The lack of diversity in the genes of a field of banana plants leaves the entire population open to devastation by all kinds of diseases - once a pest mutates to get around the defences of one Cavendish, it will quickly have them all, from one plantation to the next.
The poor banana is blighted by everything from microscopic worms to bacterial boils, but worst of all are the fungi. Fungi love hot humid climates, just like bananas, and they mutate with devilish speed. Across the world’s banana plantations, infection by one fungus in particular, the dreaded Black Sigatoka, has reached epidemic proportions. It blackens the plants’ leaves, and rots their fruit. It is possible to keep the fungus at bay, at least temporarily, through intensive application of chemicals, and therefore bananas have become the most heavily sprayed food crop in the world. About a third of the cost of producing a banana is being spent on these chemical weapons, which are freely deployed, making bananas one of the most environmentally destructive foods we grow. The constant expansion of banana plantations and the intensive use of fertilisers leave thousands of acres of unproductive land in their wake. Extreme monocrop farming destabilises the delicate ecological balance essential to the survival of hundreds of species. Local people and wildlife suffer as the chemicals leach into the water table and then into their water supply. The workers of the plantations, who are constantly exposed to the chemicals suffer from skin diseases, respiratory problems, sterility, and birth defects. If that’s not enough, all this spraying creates a bio-chemical arms race as the fungi mutate requiring the application of even harsher chemicals. Nobody believes that this is a sustainable way of feeding the world.
By placing our short-term interests first, letting greed be our masters, and provoking nature until she struck back we now find ourselves trapped in anunsustainable spiral of chemical dependence and environmental destruction. And it’s not just our sweet treat that’s at stake. Although they are having a disproportionate environmental impact, our bananas represent a small portion of those grown around the world (about 13%). And the other types of banana are essential to the survival of millions of people across the globe, who rely on the fruit as their main source of food. Bananas are the 4th most important food crop in the world. And now, our reckless behaviour is threatening everyone’s bananas. A new mutation, Panama race-4, a chemically resistant form of the disease that wiped out the former Top Banana of the commercial trade, the Gros Michel, has appeared in the Far East. Race-4 is spreading, and while it is currently ‘contained’ in a quarantine zone, most agree that it’s only a matter of time before it spreads to the major commercial plantations of Latin America and the subsistence plants of Africa. When this happens, if nothing has changed about the way we produce bananas, it will lead to epic crop failures and mass starvation.
But there is hope. Farmers, scientists, and breeders are all trying to rescue the banana. Organic methods are being developed, GM bananas are being created, and banana varieties are being bred. We are far from finding a solution: scientists agree that current organic methods can’t possibly meet world demand, market research shows that consumers don’t like the taste of new varieties, and GM solutions face widespread opposition from the organic movement. These are some awkward questions that we face as a planet, but we need to face them – and now, before it’s too late.
The banana’s tale is an allegory, a warning. The banana is the canary in the coalmine for modern agriculture. He may be an extraordinary fruit, with a unique story, but his problems are shared, in one way or another, with every crop that we grow. The banana’s special biology makes him a little more vulnerable, and the way we’ve chosen to grow him has opened him up to all kinds of troubles, but his is just a purified version of the horror stories we see playing out everyday in modern agriculture. What you learn here can be applied elsewhere, for the dilemmas faced by the banana are the same very real and immediate challenges we face throughout the globe as we attempt to figure out how to feed the world without killing the planet.
In our world of ever-increasing population, food insecurity, and environmental concerns, there is a desperate need for us to develop sustainable farming methods to protect our people, planet, and the future of our food supplies. This is one of the major issues of our time, and by saving the banana we can help to save the world!
