A Banana Catastrophe

I personally am not that fond of bananas. I think they're a bit too gushy and a bit too sweet. The biggest problem for me is that when I eat one, it makes my mouth and throat feel furry and itchy. I must be a little bit allergic to them. My boys love bananas and I know most of you do too.

Did you know that bananas are the 4th most eaten food in the world? Only rice, wheat and maize are consumed more than bananas. That is amazing to me. You guys sure do love your bananas.

I bet you didn't know that you may not be able to get bananas for much longer! Some experts predict that within 10 years the banana as we now know it could disappear.

Hogwash, you say! There is no way that a crop of such enormous value could just disappear that quickly. They (ag companies, governments, whoever) would spend whatever money it took to protect the crop. My answer to that is this- it already happened once before.

A wild scenario? Not when you consider that there’s already been one banana apocalypse. Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or “Big Mike,” accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest.

The growers tried everything, and resorted to basically chopping down large swaths of rainforest to get uninfected land on which to grow their bananas. This finally failed during the 1950s. The banana companies turned to a new variety, the Cavendish, which was nearly as good as Big Mike and had the additional bonus of not being extinct. The Cavendish is the common banana that you all know and love today.

Once a little-known species, the Cavendish was eventually accepted as Big Mike’s replacement after billions of dollars in infrastructure changes were made to accommodate different growing and ripening needs. Its advantage was its resistance to Panama disease.

So things have been great in banana land since then. We've all forgotten about Big Mike and the banana is more popular than ever. But tragically, a new fungus has emerged and has started decimating banana harvests in Asia, Australia, and Africa.

But in 1992, a new strain of the fungus—one that can affect the Cavendish—was discovered in Asia. Since then, Panama disease Race 4 has wiped out plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia and Taiwan, and it is now spreading through much of Southeast Asia. It has yet to hit Africa or Latin America, but most experts agree that it is coming. “Given today’s modes of travel, there’s almost no doubt that it will hit the major Cavendish crops,” says Randy Ploetz, the University of Florida plant pathologist who identified the first Sumatran samples of the fungus.

This sounds to me like the exact same scenario as the end of Big Mike. One difference is that the banana industry has not been able to come up with a good replacement variety. And it sounds like they are really trying. One group is attempting to cross-breed different varieties to get a banana that still tastes right, but is resistant to Race 4. Another group is using genetic engineering to change the Cavendish plant to resist the new fungus. The problem with the genetic engineering approach is that a lot of people reject this sort of science out of hand. In many countries it is illegal to sell any genetically modified food. So the best hope is the cross-breeding. Here's one man's first taste test of the cross-bred bananas.

None of our snacks are Cavendish, or descended from Cavendish—and none taste much like the banana I’m used to. Just as importers were afraid that consumers would reject today’s most popular banana when it replaced the Big Mike, they worry that a fruit that isn’t creamy and sweet, like the Cavendish, will destroy markets. “We can make bananas that could be equal,” Aguilar says, “but not the same.”

Is that good enough for you banana lovers out there? Some of the new varieties don't taste anything like a banana- one tasted more like an apple. Some had a light raspberry flavor. Those actually sound interesting to me. What about for you banana purists? Is a raspberry flavored banana good enough?

So how long does the Cavendish have? There seems to be a lot of disagreement. It seems to depend on how quickly the South American banana fields stay uninfected, but it doesn't look good.

Some scientists say five years; some say 10. Others hold out hope that it will be much longer. Aguilar has his own particular worst-case scenario, his own nightmare. “What happens,” he says, with a very intent look, “is that Panama disease comes before we have a good replacement. What happens then,” he says, nearly shuddering in the shade of a towering banana plant, “is that people change. To apples.”

My advice to you is to enjoy your bananas while you can. Give me a good Braeburn or Jonagold apple any day.