How the global banana industry is killing the world’s favorite fruit

I think it is mostly government supported now, but in the past, it's been the case that banana companies have supported research into creating new varieties, which is sort of the opposite of the claimed corporate agenda of making it impossible to maintain heirloom varieties.

http://www.eldis.org/go/home&id=18407&type=Document

which has been used against at least one seed bank.

At a quick glance, it indeed lends itself very well to corporatocratic usages.

Having said that though, it's quite unsettling how there is much blogging about "monsanto lobbying against seed banks", without absolutely any reference which is not word of mouth.

No idea if the change of banana varieties also affects it, or not.

Anecdotal evidence: A friend that traveled to Panama tasted the Gross Michel and said that the flavor is closer.

I was in Indonesia recently, and the markets there had tons of different banana varieties. And they all had a lot more taste than the Cavendish. Export those to us!

What the big banana growers are looking for is another sterile banana variety that they can plant from cuttings that will never evolve, but will somehow be resistant to all the new fungi that nature is likely to throw at it in the future. Not that likely to happen.

However, I wouldn't rule out a difference in the actual flavour being a big factor too.

Hell, I should just go buy some and see what they taste like.

Indeed, with food production, the evidence and points of view are always very diverse and nuanced. It's a complex subject--endless, really.

Here's a clip about banana chemical treatment...

> "...Zemurray finally addressed the problem. He found a solution, which he called 'Bordeaux Mixture' and that combined copper sulphate, water, and lime. Zemurray's experts cautioned him against its overuse but he had it pumped on the plantations in increasing quantity. It was a cocktail with quite a pleasant name, but the giveaway was in the title of those employed to spray and pump it: veneneros, or for want of a better translation, 'poisoners'

I would be very interested to find out if the industry decreased the pesticide/fungicide load since this was documented. I'm quoting secondhand here, Chapman notes in the 2007 book

> Of the world's food crops, the banana is the most chemically treated (so we depend on its skin's ability to prevent disease)

The story of marketing bananas is such a strange one. The 'Father of Public Relations', Edward Bernays, was heavily involved. There isn't a compelling dietary reason to eat bananas (expect, I suppose, if it's the only thing you've got). They resorted to the same marketing tactics that were used to sell cigarettes.

> "Samuel Crowther...looking back on nearly twenty years later on these early days of United Fruit in his book The Romance and Rise of the American Tropics, what was being discovered was that 'demand is a thing which must be created" (51)

Without getting into too much of a discussion about health and diet... I find that the heuristic that "anything new is bad" seems to work pretty well with food. Trans fats, high fructose corn syrup, factory farms, etc.

The history of bananas shows that the production and demand for the fruit is both very new and completely artificial.

Again, please feel free to draw your own conclusions. The only point to make here is that I found the reading surprisingly fascinating -- a banana is not just a banana.

Huh? Gene modification in plants is almost always done on individual cells that are then grown into fully-differentiated plants using tissue culture techniques. There are well established protocols for this. Bananas are routinely grown from tissue culture.

Here is an example of a genetically modified banana: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/here-come-the-super-bananas

It seems that with each meiosis step the banana plants become less fertile.

A banana has ~1g - 1.5g of protein. By dried weight, it's a lower % of protein than a lot of other fruits. I admit it isn't much (it's about as much protein as 1 teaspoon of peanut butter).

Almost _everything_ has protein in it. You get your recommended daily intake of protein at around 9 large baked potatoes.

That isn't true at all.

And it only brings up the question: Where does the meat get the protein?

Animals can not make protein (or more accurately amino acids), only plants can. (Maybe some microorganisms too? Not sure.) Animals can only rearrange existing amino acids into other amino acids or into proteins.

All plants have protein, some more than others. Grains and legumes have the most of the plants.