I guess it makes sense, because how else could you keep up with demand, but my view of animal lifecycles only has stuff like bugs fully maturing so quickly.
Interesting stuff.
Now my question is why are bananas so cheap? They come all the way from like Brazil, but they're still cheaper than the apple that is grown just a couple hours from me.
It's really a fascinating but tragic history of the exploitation of "banana republics" where banana exports become so profitable that a US-based company owned more land in some Central American countries than anyone else. They had (have?) huge fleets of ships solely for the purpose of bringing bananas into the US.
It is quite a long and complicated story, and there are more than a few books written about it.
They can be delivered while they are green and sturdy and then they are kept in ethylene atmosphere which makes them ripe so they can be instantly sold to the consumers.
Those bananas are transported from the tree to a hub, from the hub to another, and from the second hub to your shop. The price of transport is almost independent of the distance involved in the middle step.
Recommended documentary: bananaland: blood, bullets and poison
https://www.accessscience.com/content/genetic-engineering-of...
The contribution of international transport to the cost of pretty much any consumer good is minuscule compared to other factors, so the starting premise that something should be cheaper just because it's grown locally is false from the outset.
Emma Mærsk: 156,907 DWT, 150000 HP total, or about 1HP per ton fully loaded.
With the engines running full tilt she'll make 29.3 mph.
Compare with a truck that weighs 20 tons with 400 hp, so 20 hp per ton.
100 miles by truck == 2000 miles by ship.
If you keep bananas in an acetylene/ethylene-free environment, they stay green.
Green bananas are quite hard and sturdy, which makes transporting them easy and cheap.
When the time comes to sell the bananas, you just need to provide them with acetylene and they will turn yellow and pliable in about 12 hours.