going bananas

[dammuzis]

interesting article

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-bananas-are-a-parable-for-our-times-832104.html





Below the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist. The story of how the banana rose and fell can be seen a strange parable about the corporations that increasingly dominate the world – and where they are leading us.

Bananas seem at first like a lush product of nature, but this is a sweet illusion. In their current form, bananas were quite consciously created. Until 150 ago, a vast array of bananas grew in the world's jungles and they were invariably consumed nearby. Some were sweet; some were sour. They were green or purple or yellow.

A corporation called United Fruit took one particular type – the Gros Michael – out of the jungle and decided to mass produce it on vast plantations, shipping it on refrigerated boats across the globe. The banana was standardised into one friendly model: yellow and creamy and handy for your lunchbox.

There was an entrepreneurial spark of genius there – but United Fruit developed a cruel business model to deliver it. As the writer Dan Koeppel explains in his brilliant history Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World, it worked like this. Find a poor, weak country. Make sure the government will serve your interests. If it won't, topple it and replace it with one that will.

Burn down its rainforests and build banana plantations. Make the locals dependent on you. Crush any flicker of trade unionism. Then, alas, you may have to watch as the banana fields die from the strange disease that stalks bananas across the globe. If this happens, dump tonnes of chemicals on them to see if it makes a difference. If that doesn't work, move on to the next country. Begin again.

This sounds like hyperbole until you study what actually happened. In 1911, the banana magnate Samuel Zemurray decided to seize the country of Honduras as a private plantation. He gathered together some international gangsters like Guy "Machine Gun" Maloney, drummed up a private army, and invaded, installing an amigo as president.

The term "banana republic" was invented to describe the servile dictatorships that were created to please the banana companies. In the early 1950s, the Guatemalan people elected a science teacher named Jacobo Arbenz, because he promised to redistribute some of the banana companies' land among the millions of landless peasants.

President Eisenhower and the CIA (headed by a former United Fruit employee) issued instructions that these "communists" should be killed, and noted that good methods were "a hammer, axe, wrench, screw driver, fire poker or kitchen knife". The tyranny they replaced it with went on to kill more than 200,000 people.

But how does this relate to the disease now scything through the world's bananas? The evidence suggests even when they peddle something as innocuous as bananas, corporations are structured to do one thing only: maximise their shareholders' profits. As part of a highly regulated mixed economy, that's a good thing, because it helps to generate wealth or churn out ideas. But if the corporations aren't subject to tight regulations, they will do anything to maximise short-term profit. This will lead them to seemingly unhinged behaviour – like destroying the environment on which they depend.

Not long after Panama Disease first began to kill bananas in the early 20th century, United Fruit's scientists warned the corporation was making two errors. They were building a gigantic monoculture. If every banana is from one homogenous species, a disease entering the chain anywhere on earth will soon spread. The solution? Diversify into a broad range of banana types.

The company's quarantine standards were also dire. Even the people who were supposed to prevent infection were trudging into healthy fields with disease-carrying soil on their boots. But both of these solutions cost money – and United Front didn't want to pay. They decided to maximise their profit today, reckoning they would get out of the banana business if it all went wrong.

So by the 1960s, the Gros Michel that United Fruit had packaged as The One True Banana was dead. They scrambled to find a replacement that was immune to the fungus, and eventually stumbled upon the Cavendish. It was smaller and less creamy and bruised easily, but it would have to do.

But like in a horror movie sequel, the killer came back. In the 1980s, the Cavendish too became sick. Now it too is dying, its immunity a myth. In many parts of Africa, the crop is down 60 percent. There is a consensus among scientists that the fungus will eventually infect all Cavendish bananas everywhere. There are bananas we could adopt as Banana 3.0 – but they are so different to the bananas that we know now that they feel like a totally different and far less appetising fruit. The most likely contender is the Goldfinger, which is crunchier and tangier: it is know as "the acid banana".

Thanks to bad corporate behaviour and physical limits, we seem to be at a dead end. The only possible glimmer of hope is a genetically modified banana that can resist Panama Disease. But that is a distant prospect, and it is resisted by many people: would you like a banana split made from a banana split with fish genes?

When we hit up against a natural limit like Panama disease, we are bemused, and then affronted. It seems instinctively bizarre to me that lush yellow bananas could vanish from the global food supply, because I have grown up in a culture without any idea of physical limits to what we can buy and eat.

Is there a parable for our times in this odd milkshake of banana, blood and fungus? For a hundred years, a handful of corporations were given a gorgeous fruit, set free from regulation, and allowed to do what they wanted with it. What happened? They had one good entrepreneurial idea – and to squeeze every tiny drop of profit from it, they destroyed democracies, burned down rainforests, and ended up killing the fruit itself.

But have we learned? Across the world, politicians like George Bush and David Cameron are telling us the regulation of corporations is "a menace" to be "rolled back"; they even say we should leave the planet's climate in their hands. Now that's bananas.

[Tossica]

STFU! Communist.

[Lueyen]

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/bananas.asp

[Harrison]

Whadda ya know, hippies are stupid and wrong. I am shocked. No, really....

[Tossica]

The snopes article does not debunk this claim. Maybe the "bananas as we know them will be gone soon" is a bit dramatic but the rest is pretty much true.

[Lueyen]

The snopes article does not debunk this claim.

Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist

- note absolute statement presented as fact, stated as a foregone conclusion, a guarantee.

"Diseases are, and will remain, major constraints to both export and subsistence production of banana, and there is no doubt that Black Sigatoka and Panama Disease constitute the most important threats," said Randy C. Ploetz, Professor at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center. "However, it is unlikely that these problems will cause production to decrease greatly in the next decade, let alone that the crop will become extinct."

- puts the problem in realistic perspective, and refutes the above statement as not only NOT being a foregone conclusion, but aslo going so far as to say it is unlikely.

Maybe the "bananas as we know them will be gone soon" is a bit dramatic but the rest is pretty much true.

It really made me laugh that you couldn't even say the rest was true without the CYA part of the statement. That the article asserts some glaring falsehoods as facts, does not automatically invalidate the end conclusion which I do believe you agree with. There are much better real situations to support that conclusion, one need not support or try to hold up fabricated ones.

[Tossica]

I'm more referring to the part about banana overlords raping the land, propping up and dismissing governments, ignoring common sense and respect for nature for the sake of higher profits.

Whether the banana as we know it will be gone in 5 years or not is debatable but the fact that the banana industry is totally fucked up is not.

Same holds true with the global warming "debate". The fact that humans have taken a giant shit on our planet is not debatable but how much damage we've actually done in the long run is.

[Tikker]

It really made me laugh that you couldn't even say the rest was true without the CYA part of the statement. That the article asserts some glaring falsehoods as facts, does not automatically invalidate the end conclusion which I do believe you agree with. There are much better real situations to support that conclusion, one need not support or try to hold up fabricated ones.

the part that made me laugh was how you just completely dismissed the contrary belief without any actual factual data, or corroboration other than words on the internet

[Lueyen]

It really made me laugh that you couldn't even say the rest was true without the CYA part of the statement. That the article asserts some glaring falsehoods as facts, does not automatically invalidate the end conclusion which I do believe you agree with. There are much better real situations to support that conclusion, one need not support or try to hold up fabricated ones.

the part that made me laugh was how you just completely dismissed the contrary belief without any actual factual data, or corroboration other than words on the internet

I linked the snopes article as it is commonly accepted as a reliable source, it was not however the reason for my general dismissal of the "banana scare".

[Gypsiyee]

the most entertaining part is that snopes doesn't even refute it. the article flat out says that it's only the cavendish in danger and that it's our banana of choice and there are other options out there - snopes agrees.

There is a consensus among scientists that the fungus will eventually infect all Cavendish bananas everywhere. There are bananas we could adopt as Banana 3.0 – but they are so different to the bananas that we know now that they feel like a totally different and far less appetising fruit. The most likely contender is the Goldfinger, which is crunchier and tangier: it is know as "the acid banana".

Bananas aren't about to be swept from the face of the earth by a deadly pestilence poised to wipe them out. There are about 300 varieties of the fruit, and the current fear applies to only one of them, the Cavendish. Granted, the Cavendish is our banana of choice, but it isn't the only banana out there.

The snopes claim stating its falsehood is only based on the fact that there are more varieties, which the article already states... so your smug "checkmate" post referring to snopes is moot.

[Harrison]

The whole fucking argument is stupid.

[Gypsiyee]

I don't disagree with you there at all.. I think Dammuzis was just trying to share something he found interesting and somehow it got turned all political and snide where it didn't need to be.

[dammuzis]

i mostly posted it for arlos our resident communist... personally i found the factual history lesson more interesting than the current banana going extinct.

[Lueyen]

the most entertaining part is that snopes doesn't even refute it. the article flat out says that it's only the cavendish in danger and that it's our banana of choice and there are other options out there - snopes agrees.

There is a consensus among scientists that the fungus will eventually infect all Cavendish bananas everywhere. There are bananas we could adopt as Banana 3.0 – but they are so different to the bananas that we know now that they feel like a totally different and far less appetising fruit. The most likely contender is the Goldfinger, which is crunchier and tangier: it is know as "the acid banana".

Bananas aren't about to be swept from the face of the earth by a deadly pestilence poised to wipe them out. There are about 300 varieties of the fruit, and the current fear applies to only one of them, the Cavendish. Granted, the Cavendish is our banana of choice, but it isn't the only banana out there.

The snopes claim stating its falsehood is only based on the fact that there are more varieties, which the article already states... so your smug "checkmate" post referring to snopes is moot.

Of course if you read the rest of the article the part that specifically addresses the likely hood of the Cavendish extinction:

"Diseases are, and will remain, major constraints to both export and subsistence production of banana, and there is no doubt that Black Sigatoka and Panama Disease constitute the most important threats," said Randy C. Ploetz, Professor at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center. "However, it is unlikely that these problems will cause production to decrease greatly in the next decade, let alone that the crop will become extinct."

Does refute the claim.

[Gypsiyee]

I did read the entire article. That doesn't refute it, that's one person saying "unlikely."

if it's a consensus of people or one opinion.. I'm likely to lean more toward the consensus. I'm not discounting his opinion, but to use such a flimsy basis for your 'fact' is not a grounds for declaration of a correctness victory.

opinion vs. opinion, neither one can be proven correct until the time comes to pass, and your insinuation and insulting talk-down tone toward tossica was not only unnecessary, it wasn't even justified by hard facts - and that's my point.

[Phlegm]

Bananas are never will be extinct because they are made by God.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z-OLG0KyR4

[Lueyen]

I did read the entire article. That doesn't refute it, that's one person saying "unlikely."

if it's a consensus of people or one opinion.. I'm likely to lean more toward the consensus. I'm not discounting his opinion, but to use such a flimsy basis for your 'fact' is not a grounds for declaration of a correctness victory.

opinion vs. opinion, neither one can be proven correct until the time comes to pass, and your insinuation and insulting talk-down tone toward tossica was not only unnecessary, it wasn't even justified by hard facts - and that's my point.

So now it's a consensus? What do you base that on? The actual origins of this banana extinction concern trace back to 2003 to Dr. Emil Frison a Belgian plant pathologist, who expressed concern about the future of cavendish bananas due to disease. Shortly after Frison himself stated that the predictions of extinction were a bit exaggerated. I should also note that Dr. Frison's work is specifically with bananas and the goal is to find an answer the the problem of disease.

As far as only time will tell, that is true for the prediction of extinction, but not for estimating the likely hood. "Unlikely" is not an absolute, so regardless of the outcome it can not be considered false, yet if in 30 years we still have the cavendish banana the authors statements will have proven false. I can say it is unlikely that I will get a flat tire on my way to work tomorrow, now if it does come to pass, that does not change the fact that it was unlikely to happen.

I think it's also interesting to note that the original predictions of 10 years in 2003 have now grown to 30 years out in 2008. I have to wonder if in 30 years I'll be reading or hearing about bananas being extinct within 60 years.

Tossica if I came across as insulting or talking down to you, I'm sorry, my intent was to point out that the basis for this article was flawed and that while much of it is true there are certain historical facts that I believe were deliberately left out even if pertinent to the discussion because they did not support the authors conclusion. I find the article to be disingenuous and miss leading, and I feel there are much better examples that are based in reality that one could use to come to the same conclusions. Off the top of my head, the fairly recent example of BP in Alaska comes to mind.

[Tossica]

No apology necessary.

You still seem to have missed the point of this article in particular.

[brinstar]

which, i believe, was only partly about the potential extinction of bananas, and more about the unchecked aggression and destruction caused by the banana industry in areas of the world too weak to fight it off

[Tossica]

BINGO!

[Tikker]

lueyen is all for that tho

[brinstar]

well it is the american way

[Evermore]

Toss tell the truth. You just want to dry out the peals and smoke them

[ClakarEQ]

Toss tell the truth. You just want to dry out the peals and smoke them

Dude, man, like dude, is that for true?
rofl