Shit: we really have a serious banana problem

Bananas enjoyed a glorious moment during the coronavirus pandemic, as millions of people worldwide decided that these were the months to hone their banana bread skills. But those bananas—we really need to talk about them for a moment…

Because things are really not going well. Although this is not news from today or yesterday (it has been known for some time), it is still an issue we would rather stick our heads in the sand about: the future of the banana is quite uncertain. News sources such as NOS reported this to us earlier, but especially now that a pandemic like coronavirus has proven that nothing can be taken for granted, we want to pause and reflect on it once more. Bad news for the economies of dozens of exporting countries, and for banana lovers at home.

Sick fruit

What exactly is the problem? In the middle of the last century, a plant disease (also known as Panama disease) wiped out the entire species of what was then the world’s best-selling banana in Central and South America: the Gros Michel (Big Mike, so to speak). This banana was grown as a monoculture: it was so successful as an export product that no other crops were grown on the plantations, even though they were needed to maintain balance. In one fell swoop, an entire species was wiped out by this Panama fungus.

New discovery

A great deal of effort went into finding an alternative: a banana variety that would prove immune to the disease. It was found: the Cavendish banana. It turned out to be resistant to the fungus, and it is the banana we know today, the one found in our shops and at our markets. However, instead of taking a different approach from the one used in the middle of the last century, almost all banana companies still grow only this banana on their plantations. And now history seems to be repeating itself.

Same problem

A variant of Panama disease, TR4 (Fusarium Tropical race), threatens the survival of banana cultivation on several continents. The fact that this new fungus has also been spreading through South America on a large scale since 2019 is disastrous for the economies of the countries concerned and makes it likely that we, too, will be without bananas within the foreseeable future.

Fingers crossed

We fervently hope that scientists will eventually come up with a solution, that companies will be open to it, and that we can all continue enjoying that soft, yellow, universally loved fruit for a long time to come. In the meantime, here are some interesting facts:

Hyper-popular

Only rice, wheat and corn are crops eaten more widely around the world than bananas. So many bananas! Plantains—the variety you cannot eat raw but can use to make delicious pisang goreng, for example—are included too.

The banana tree does not exist

Bananas do not actually grow on a tree, by the way. The plant is really a herbaceous plant, whose leaves grow over one another in a spiral. This is called a ‘pseudostem’.

Yellow vegetable

According to the horticultural definition, the banana is actually a vegetable. But according to the culinary definition, it is definitely a fruit.

Peel prohibition

At the beginning of the 19th century, so many bananas were eaten as street food in the United States and the peels tossed onto the streets that they caused accidents. The city of St. Louis promptly issued an official ban on throwing banana peels into the street.

Substances

We dutifully put bananas in a bag with hard avocados because banana peels emit ethylene. This is supposed to make them ripen faster, but even then you need quite a few days of patience. The familiar clown joke about slipping on a banana peel is made possible in part by vessels in the peel that release a polysaccharide gel when pressure is applied, and that gel is genuinely slippery.

Why why

… are bananas curved? Not because (as is sometimes said) they grow toward the light, but because gravity pulls the bunch downward while it is actually growing upward.

Sources: NOS, Quartz, Wikipedia

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