So Long Bananas
Posted on June 23, 2008 - Filed Under Environment/Conservation |
According to this NYTimes piece they stand a pretty decent chance of going extinct in the next decade or so.
This has happened before. Our great-grandparents grew up eating not the Cavendish but the Gros Michel banana, a variety that everyone agreed was tastier. But starting in the early 1900s, banana plantations were invaded by a fungus called Panama disease and vanished one by one. Forest would be cleared for new banana fields, and healthy fruit would grow there for a while, but eventually succumb.
By 1960, the Gros Michel was essentially extinct and the banana industry nearly bankrupt. It was saved at the last minute by the Cavendish, a Chinese variety that had been considered something close to junk: inferior in taste, easy to bruise (and therefore hard to ship) and too small to appeal to consumers. But it did resist the blight.
Over the past decade, however, a new, more virulent strain of Panama disease has begun to spread across the world, and this time the Cavendish is not immune. The fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20. The big banana companies have been slow to finance efforts to find either a cure for the fungus or a banana that resists it. Nor has enough been done to aid efforts to diversify the world’s banana crop by preserving little-known varieties of the fruit that grow in Africa and Asia.
Enjoy them while you can. (PROTIP: anyone who waits for bananas to get speckled with black marks before eating them is retarded. Seriously. They are best eaten when just turning from green to yellow. Otherwise they’re mushy, bruised and disgusting, and not fit for man nor beast).
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Good riddance. Apples ftw!