While the title may cause readers to infer this is a post about a new reggae band, that would be incorrect. It is, in fact, a post about bananas. (Feel free to use your browser's backpage button at this point.) The inspiration for the post began a recent early morning, minutes after becoming vertical, still in that semi-comatose brain state when there is no coherent, linear thought-just random, spontaneous firings of phrases and pictures as the mind "reboots" for the day. I was waiting for the coffee to drip enough to steal a cup, and staring at a lovely, yellow, bruise-free banana that I would consume as soon as my brain got the help files open to the "Bananas-Peeling and Eating" tab. One of those random thought firings was that the folks who claim eggs are nature's perfect food are misguided. Bananas are, in fact, the perfect food. I have heard over the past few years of the threat to the banana industry from a disease, the Panama blight, that was destroying vast acreages of bananas and threating to ultimately wipe out the entire world crop. I was wondering what, if any, progress had been made in fighting this threat, and formed the hypothesis that American ingenuity driven by strong capitalist motivation would solve the problem. I resolved to find out. Thanks to Google, I now have read more and learned more about bananas than it is rational to do. I learned the curvaceous beauty pictured above is the Cavendish species, one of about 300 species of bananas and plantains, but accounting for nearly 100% of North American consumption. It is not, however, your Grampa's banana. Prior to 1960, American breakfast tables were adorned by the Gros Michel, or Big Mike, species. Those were attacked by Panama blight in the '50's and are now extinct. They were softer, creamier in texture, and sweeter than the Cavendish. Both species are seedless clones-genetically identical "monoculture" plants that produce fruit consistent with the traits necessary for success in the American marketplace. They have the color, taste, resistance to bruising, and shelf life consumers demand, but that identical nature makes them all equally vulnerable to a specific disease. If one plant lacks resistance to some microbe, they all do. It is hard to gauge, from my reading, how imminent the threat of extinction is for the Cavendish. There has, apparently, been more destruction of crops in China and Southeast Asia than in Central America, but it is definitely there. I was reading in the online Panama News about strategies to slow the spread, and the impact of affected crops on the already impoverished farm workers who cultivate and harvest bananas. That article had a sort of assumptive confidence that all the efforts to produce a new more resistant species would bear fruit. (sorry-I've tried, until this point successfully, to avoid the words "bunch" or "slice" or "split" or "yes, we'll have no bananas". That one slipped through.) Besides the 2 blights, there is a whole other dark underside and backstory to the cheery looking banana in our lunchboxes. In the late 1800's, Americans were first introduced to this exotic fruit by a Boston area importer, who found them a big hit. He and investors formed Boston Fruit Company, which evolved into Chiquita. Together with United Fruit Company, now Del Monte, and others, they set about turning Central America and the Carribean into their plantation, exploiting the land, the laborers, and the governments. They cleared vast acres of jungle and built railroads to get their product out to market. They propped up governments sympathetic and cooperative to their industry and financed the overthrow of those that were not, giving rise to the phrase "banana republic" to describe these puppets (coined by O. Henry in the 1904 book "Cabbages and Kings".) As recently as 1974, an investigation following the suicide of Chiquita C.E.O. Eli Black revealed a scheme to pay $2.5 million in bribes to Honduran officials to keep export taxes favorable. So, the next time there's banana on a co-workers desk resist the temptation to pick it up and pretend it's a telephone, or the other silly (or obscene) things bananas seem to tempt people to do, and consider the story of violence, political and corporate corruption, exploited workers, genetic engineering and possible extinction it represents. But they sure are good!
jls
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