Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

About the book...

Is the banana going extinct? To most people, a banana is a banana: yellow and sweet, uniformly sized, always seedless. Americans eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. In other parts of the world, bananas—like rice, wheat, and corn—are what keep millions of people alive.

Market Advertises Banana Type as 'Cavendish'

I took this pic with my mobile July 24 at the Whole Foods on Houston St. in lower Manhattan. I've never seen a U.S. retailer get so specific.

First Field Test of Genetically Modified Cavendish

Australian banana researcher James Dale. Image: QUT

Cavendish is our supermarket banana - the one that's under threat from the newly-remerged Panama Disease (see here for more info.) The Cavendish banana is absolutely seedless and sterile, so it cannot be bred conventionally; the only sway to ensure its future as a commercial fruit would be through genetic engineering (the alternative would be to allow the Cavendish to die out and replace it with a different - and as yet unidentified - banana variety.) Now, according to a news report from the Australia Broadcasting Company, a project spearheaded by Australian scientist James Dale, who runs the Queensland University of Technology's Centre for Tropical Crops and Biocommodities, has begun the field test of such fruit - the first time lab-modified Cavendish have ever been put to large-scale outdoor trial. The test, the story says, will be "to improve the nutrient content and disease resistance of Cavendish bananas."

Australia is in desperate banana straits right now, having lost much of its crop to poor weather and a subsequent Panama Disease attack. The field tests are partially being funded by a grant from Microsoft founder Bill Gates. (Dale, by the way, prefers to use the term "biofortification" to describe genetically engineered fruit - one of a long list of proposed terms for such processes, including "genetically modified," "transgenic," "GM," "GMO," and others. The desire to come up with a less-scary name for lab-developed foods is understandable, but misguided. The real problem is that people have been misled into thinking that all genetic modification of foods is terrifying. The responsibility for this comes partially from big agricultural companies who have behaved terribly when they have introduced modified products - but also from consumer groups who oppose all forms of genetic modification while failing to understand even the basics of the science behind it. )

Comment: The Australia trials will likely horrify some folks - possibly because earlier tests of genetic bananas weren't focused on supermarket fruit, and this brings the prospect of a so-called "Frankenbanana" closer to home. But genetic engineering isn't an absolutely scary prospect, and this kind of work is needed with bananas, both because they're a vital subsistence food, and because they're such a weak organism. And the Cavendish is a very safe banana to experiment on: with no seeds or pollen, there is zero - absolutely zero - chance of it the kind of cross-crop contamination occurring that we've seen with engineered corn. Bananas need a lot of help to survive - and the lab is one of the places that help is going to come from. Not that the Down Under effort is entirely altruistic, I'm sure: if a Panama Disease-resistant banana can be built by Dale and his team, they'll also have built a gold mine.

This is Real: Banana-Smuggling Ring Smashed

Chiquita-owned banana boat, c. 1932

Newsweek's July 12th issue reported that a boatload of Ecuadorian fruit intercepted by Italian authorities two years ago was part of a larger smuggling ring that realized money was to be made in black-market fruit on the continent, and not - as was originally thought - a one-off incident (perhaps a botched cocaine smuggling operation, where somebody forgot to stuff the fruit full of the drug.) An investigation completed this week reported on the business:

"The trade is big enough now that the Italian authorities are becoming concerned about lost revenue. When officials completed a two-year probe into illicit fruit smuggling this week, they found the trade represented losses of more $80 million in customs fees and more than $2 million in unpaid sales tax on bananas alone."

The reason? Bananas are highly taxed in Europe, the result of trade laws that favor fruit grown in former colonies, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean. So fruit from Ecuador - the world's largest banana exporter - comes under restrictive levies. U.S. based-banana companies have been fighting over the taxes for years, but the issue rages on. Chiquita recently adopted an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy by announcing it would open new plantations in Africa.

For consumers, the smuggled bananas turned out to be a good deal. investigators helped uncover the extent of the plot by visiting grocers and noticing extraordinarily low prices for the fruit. "We kept wondering how they [the markets] can be selling these Ecuadorean bananas so cheap," one said. No longer, he added: "That certainly won't be the case now."

More on banana trade wars here.

More on Chiquita in Africa here.

Not Everyone Thought the Gros Michel Banana Variety was Better...

Count Lasher: Jamaican recording star and banana lover, "lover" being the operative word. Image: MentoMusic.com

Background: The banana we eat today is a variety called the "Cavendish." But it isn't the breed your grandparents ate. That fruit was known as the "Gros Michel," and it was - by all reports - a bigger, hardier, and better tasting fruit than the one we now consume. But the Gros Michel was susceptible to a disease that wiped it out as a commercial crop by the 1960s. The Cavendish was only adopted because it resisted that disease. Today, a new form of the disease is back, and this time, the Cavendish is the banana getting sick. There's no cure in sight. But did everyone prefer the taste of the Gros Michel? Apparently not...

There are tons of banana songs - the Chiquita jingle and Day-O (actually called "The Banana Boat Song") are among the best known - but my current favorite has to be "Robusta Banana," a song recorded in the 1950s by a Jamaican singer named Count Lasher. Here's just one verse of the song, which mentions several banana breeds:

"Gros Michelle" she said, "is not too bad" - People like it when it is cooked with shad - But I don't eat shad. I eat fresh fish - So I've got to have Robusta in my dish"

I was made aware of the tune by Mike Garnice, an expert on Jamaican Mento, a musical precursor tp the ska and reggae most of us are familiar with. Mike read my book, and became a banana enthusiast: "I am now the foremost banana expert where I work, and always have an eye out for non-Cavendish varieties. I'm writing you to make you aware of a c.1956 Jamaican song about bananas. It's by Count Lasher, Jamaica’s greatest mento star. I think you’ll get a kick out of the lyrics. My next trip to Jamaica will have to include a Robusta!"

Image: MentoMusic.com

I had to let Mike know that Robusta is a form of Cavendish, and the reason it probably was preferred was because it was fresh! As noted in my recent post about Coquimba, the banana company that's trying to bring just-from-the-tree Cavendish to local markets in the U.S., a fresher banana tastes far better than one that's been shipped and stored and refrigerated and gassed (in order to delay ripening) on the way to supermarkets, as the bananas we buy are.

Jamaica was where the very first supermarket bananas (of the Gros Michel variety) imported to the U.S. originated, back in 1879 - they were imported to New Jersey by a sea captain named Lorenzo Dow Baker. He went into partnership with a New England entrepreneur named Andrew Preston, and the company they founded - Boston Fruit - is known today as Chiquita.

Mike sent me a link to his website, which is all about Mento, and includes the very suggestive Lasher lyrics, which mention several banana types. There's also a clip from the song.

Thanks, Mike!

Mark Cavendish, Bananas, and the Tour de France

Is this cyclist named after the famous banana? (Photo from the Telegraph UK)

British cyclist Mark Cavendish won the fifth stage of the Tour de France. I've gotten several notes (including one from my dad) wondering whether he's related to the Cavendish family from whose name the world's most popular banana variety was derived. I've checked around, and the answer is that I don't know. If you do, post a comment below.

In the meantime:

Here's an article in Bicycling magazine that explains why the banana is "cycling's perfect food."

Here's a previous entry on the Cavendish family connection to bananas.

Here's a link to an outdated book I wrote about the Tour de France.

Cavendish's personal website is here; his Wikipedia entry is here.

Troubling Times for Supermarket Bananas

This sign was spotted at the QFC market in the Wallingford area of Seattle, on 45th St. Reader Mac reports that there were also some "gross" looking red bananas present.

Varietal Banana Coming to U.S. markets?

For 100 years, the big banana growers have said it couldn't be done: bring a better-tasting, non-commodity version of the fruit to the American shopper. The reasons? Bananas have to be cheap; they need to be grown in massive quantities; they need to be shipped and processed in ways that require least-common-denominator techniques that lead to a product that's good - but nowhere near as tasty as some local varieties or even a standard fruit (the breed we eat is called a Cavendish) eaten locally.

I recently spoke to a fruit importer named Jose Ubilla who hopes to change that. His family runs a small Nicaraguan banana plantation, and began importing fruit under the Coquimba brand name in mid-June (the fruit is being marketed as "The Gourmet Banana.") Though the fruit is of the same Cavendish variety that you'll find in supermarkets everywhere, Ubilla says that the fruit he's selling are bigger, better tasting, and will arrive at markets in better condition that standard supermarket fruit than the Chiquita, Dole, and Bonita bananas you're used to seeing. The reason? Shorter shipping times and better handling: the fruit is babied on the tree, with each bunch picked at its individual point of readiness, and then shipped in carefully monitored containers: "You can't do it this way if you're handling large quantities of fruit," says Ubilla.

The fruit is currently being sold at a few farmers markets in Florida, so - being in Los Angeles - I haven't had a chance to sample it. But Ubilla is working with a California distributor, as well, and promises me a taste - so stay tuned; I'll be updating with an on-the-spot report.

Comment: there's no doubt that a fresh Cavendish is better tasting (and has a less mushy texture) than a less fresh one, and shipping in small quantities with more care makes all the difference. I can't tell you how many letters I get asking how it is possible that the bananas folks have eaten in Central America can be the same variety as the one they get in supermarkets here. If the Coquimba fruit performs as promised, it should be closer to that straight-from-the-plantation experience.

The challenge Coquimba faces is marketing. Consumers are used to treating bananas as a commodity. Are they going to be willing to pay more for a banana that might not look all that different than the ones they're used to? I love Ubilla's idea of selling at farmers markets - a place bananas have usually been absent from.

But here's what I'd really love to see: Coquimba to succeed so much that it goes one step beyond Cavendish - and gets into different banana varieties entirely. With hundreds of delicious non-Cavendish banana types out there, why not approach the fruit the way apple producers did a decade ago when they introduced today's plethora of varieties to a market that featured only the bland red delicious and granny smith? Check out these articles (here and here) on the bananas of India. If only we could get a few of those into our stores!

Would you be willing to pay a little more for a fresher-from-the-tree, better-tasting banana? Add your comment below.

Banana Juice Research in India is conducted by Nuclear Energy Experts

Atomic banana juice from India

This is really more than you'll ever want to know about extracting juice from bananas, but it is interesting, because the folks at India's Bhaba Atomic Research Centre have figured out ways to squeeze a lot more juice from the fruit than previously was thought to be possible. I don't know why the nuclear scientists are spending time doing this, though my (absolutely uninformed) guess is that atomic research involves advanced centrifuges, and so do the juice extraction techniques described on the linked pages. A second guess might be more political: India's atomic energy program is a huge source of national pride and strategic military importance. Bananas are also a source of national pride - and are of huge importance to the national diet. Maybe it isn't so silly that top minds and resources would be devoted to working on both in a single facility?

Or maybe these guys just have a lot of time on their hands and got thirsty.

A Visit to the New Home of the International Banana Museum

Top Banana Glen Speer

A humble exterior, four miles south of Interstate 15.

I finally got a chance to visit the new home of the International Banana Museum (previous posts here and here) earlier this month. It was awesome! I just missed Ken Banister - the museum's founder, who moved his banana collection from the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena to the high desert town of Hesperia, California, about a year ago, but I found myself in the able hands of Glen Speer, whose business card lists him this way:

GLEN SPEER

Genuine Antique Christian Person

BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, CAN"T REMEMBER

Free Advice!

Top Banana - Banana Museum

Hesperia, CA

His credentials turned out to be impeccable and true. Glen graciously showed me around, recommended that I have lunch at the omelette place across the street - over 100 types of egg-based dishes - and encouraged me to take lots of pictures, which I did. As I was leaving, another local told me to quit with the snapshots: "You'll make his head even bigger!" But from the looks of things, Glen has a lot to be proud of.

More on the museum, including additional pictures, after the jump.

Heroic Clerk Saves Store from Banana Attack

Battles Banana-Wielding Thug.

In my book, I note that one observer described the banana as a "weapon of conquest" in Latin America. This doesn't apply in Maryland, where a would-be thief attempted to use the fruit to rob a 7-Eleven - and was denied by a brave clerk.

Incredibly (or maybe not so incredibly), this isn't the first time this has happened - and the last time, the guy got eighteen months in the hoosegow for his malfeasance (third item down.)

Co-opt. Subvert. Destroy.

A bigger threat to the banana than any disease. The world's favorite fruit is the cheapest and healthiest alternative to junk food. So what would the junk food industry do?

This:

Gotta go try one.

This is so yuck I won't even comment...

I'm sorry for this picture.

Click the link, to the Daijiworld newspaper, to find out the results of the study, if you dare...

Bangalore, May 29: Nagasandra, a village 50 km from Bangalore in Doddaballapur taluk, isn’t any different from the hundreds of others surrounding it. But in a remote corner of this small village is a 1-acre banana plantation that has been part of a unique research project: a study on the effect of anthropogenic liquid waste on soil properties and crop growth. In lay-man terms, it is a study on how human urine can be used as fertilizer in agriculture...

read on...

Chiquita is Motley Fool's "Worst Stock in the World"

At least for today - Monday, June 18. The reasons include the company's dismal forecast for the third quarter (a "significant loss," it told investors); the payments it was revealed to have made to Colombian terrorists; and worries about the Panama Disease fungus arriving in Latin America. The investment site specifically takes Chiquita to task for failing to diversify its banana offerings on supermarket shelves, noting that the disease-threatened Cavendish is "the only Banana that Chiquita sells." The conclusion? "Big Trouble."

Here's what Chiquita needs to do: figure out how to sell more bananas than the Cavendish. Figure out a way to make transporting and growing them much more environmentally friendly. And move toward fair trade principles, which I think are more important - at the moment - than organics.

More here.

SPECIAL REPORT: Urgent threat to Africa's Bananas - news update, how to help

Plants killed by BXW, arguably today's deadliest banana disease.

Close up: bacterial discharge from a banana plant.

Note to readers: This is a long post, based on news reports from the past week. I think it's important - please, if you can, read it, and pass it on. Thanks.

In the months since I've been publishing this blog - and in the now six months since my book has come out - this is probably the most serious and important item I've posted. In the past week, new reports of the spread of what is the most deadly banana disease facing the crop right now - banana xanthomonas wilt (BXW) - have appeared in the African news media.

For the first time, the disease has appeared in Kenya. BXW moves easily - it can be transmitted in dirt, by people, on tools, or even by birds. It has so far appeared in the Teso, Busia, Malaba, Chakol, and Busia districts of the nation, all near the Ugandan border. Once it shows up in a banana plantation, it is likely spread by insects.

In Uganda, meanwhile, the disease has become so widespread that yields on banana farms have reached dangerously low levels. Acres and acres of crops have been lost, creating a cascade of economic losses in a trading system that spreads from the tiniest villages to Uganda's cities, all based on the transport and trade of bananas.

The urgency of this cannot be overstated. Uganda and the nations surrounding it absolutely depend on bananas as a staple foodstuff. Millions rely on bananas for survival. And the spread of BXW into Kenya is yet another indicator that this deadly disease is on the march. As with Panama Disease - the wilting fungus that threatens our banana, the Cavendish - BXW (a bacterial malady) is incurable. The difference between the two is that BXW moves faster and threatens, right now, food supplies in nations with fragile governments.

What's to be done? Two things. And I'm going to say some stuff that might disturb that regular readers of this blog, especially those who know that I take a very hard line when it comes to corporate skullduggery directed banana workers in South and Central America. In this case, I'm going to veer away from what is traditionally seen as a related "socially responsible" stance.

FIRST, banana diversity. In order to mitigate the spread of disease, the number of kinds of bananas being grown needs to be increased. But there's a real disconnect in the world of food security - that means the organizations that help manage and alleviate hunger - when it comes to bananas. A lot of them don't know how important bananas are; those that do don't pay a lot of attention to how important funding the preservation of banana diversity (and banana research in general) is. There's just not enough time or money being spent on bananas compared to other staple crops. And let's not even get into whether or not the big banana companies care to fund research that might recognize the importance of saving the sister breeds of the one they make billions on: many - if not most - banana executives don't even know that subsistence bananas exist (or that they might help in reverse, since they could contain genetic material that could help save the Cavendish, which is also threatened by disease.

SECOND, genetic engineering: It is time for the general public to recognize that working at the DNA level is not always a corporate trojan horse into destroying local agriculture and contaminating the environment. This isn't all about Monsanto. While consumers in the suburbs and Whole Foods stores protest against all GMO foods - while barely knowing what GMO is - they bluntly prevent out legitimate public research that might stop hunger. Time learn that everything has nuance, the disease that are killing the bananas: they work in just two modes: off - and on.

About the images and BXW: the first shot shows a plantation that has been destroyed by BXW. The leaves of the banana plant have turned black and yellow, and then wilted altogether. Without leaves, the banana plant dies. Another key point: in village agriculture, the death of a banana tree can mean a cascade of disaster in a family's diet, because other staple foods grow in the shade the tree creates. The second image shows bacterial material oozing from the plant itself.

Even if you think genetic engineering sucks, you should write to Fernando Aguirre, the CEO of Chiquita, and ask him to fund global banana research. This is the address:

Chiquita

250 E. Fifth Street

Cincinnati OH 45202 USA

You will probably get a form letter in reply unless you include a line in there that says something like: "I challenge you not to include a form letter in reply." You might also include printouts from the below links, or a printout of this blog entry.

Here's a link on the Kenya spread. Here's a link on the Uganda crisis. Here's a link to Bioversity International, the group that coordinates banana research worldwide. You can learn a lot more there. Things are really moving quickly now when it comes to saving the banana - but they aren't hopeless. The keys, again: Diversity. Conservation. Research.

Images via the British Society for Plant Pathology

Australia to tax bananas starting July 1

These are Australian things.

Australia's banana crop has been devastated by bad weather and Panama Disease. Now, the country is going to be imposing a AUS 1.7 cent-per-kilo (1.5 cents US) levy on the fruit. It will be applied at the wholesale level, then passed on to the consumer, starting July 1.

Nicky Singh, president of the Australian Banana Growers Council, said that revenues from the tax would raise $5 million AUS (4.7 million US) to fund "promotions, research and development, and plant health programs."

The imposition of a single-foodstuff tax is a big development, and another indication of how serious the problem of banana disease is. Australia, as I've noted before, is becoming a world epicenter for banana problems. 85% of the country's crop was destroyed by a cyclone in 2007, leaving the remaining fruit vulnerable to Panama Disease, which began to spread aggressively last year, despite a quarantine program designed to stop the malady.

News report on banana tax here.

Earlier Australia report here.

Chiquita doesn't like the iPhone

The company's chief information officer says so here. They probably use Blackberries. The phone pictured above is neither; it is LG's "Banana" model, which is only available in Korea. (OK, so it was a slow banana news week. After the onslaught of disease, terrorism, and Chiquita-related news, thank goodness.)

Read my article on Panama Disease in "The Scientist"

The most controversial part of my book is my assertion that biotech is key to saving the banana. I came by this assertion with a lot of difficulty - initially believing that most genetic engineering in our food supply was a bad thing. But, as usual, the issue isn't black and white. With bananas, the shade of gray is especially green.

Read the piece here.

Toronto Globe & Mail: a "Hard-nosed journalistic account"

FOOD
The fruits of our labour

by Carol Off

(reviewed with CITRUS: A History, by Pierre Laszlo)

There was a time, not long ago, when most people spent most of their time producing food. The inverse
is now true, at least for those of us in the developed world. Paradoxically, as we move further and further
away from the source of what sustains us, we've become more obsessed with knowing where our food
comes from and under what circumstances it's harvested.

First-ever world banana conference

The world's most important bananas - the ones people subsist on - are grown in Africa. But, sadly, there's been little global attention paid to the plight of the African fruit, which faces disease, loss of diversity, as well as damage due to war and changes in culture and population. Scientists have been unable, for the most part, to obtain either the funding to work on preserving and studying existing African varieties, or work on introducing new banana types to the continent. In October, for the first time, the world's banana experts will gather in Kenya for a conference dedicated to the African banana.

Though most readers of this blog probably won't find reason to attend, the event is historic and important, and I'll be covering it as it approaches - and as it happens, since I plan to attend. The key point, again: the world hasn't woken up to how important - or threatened - bananas are. This is a huge step.

More on the conference here.

Couldn't agree more...

Farmers Market, 3rd & Fairfax, Los Angeles, May 5, 2008

Wired magazine: Frankenfoods, good; Hippie foods, bad?

First good. Second, not so good.

More or less, maybe, according to the May issue of the science/tech/culture publication, because:

GMO agriculture may have a smaller carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

Organics may have a larger carbon footprint than traditionally grown crops.

In my book, I note that the promise of organic bananas is far less than we'd wish it to be - and the potential of GM bananas has been so undervalued (and so feared) as to be a factor in creating hunger in banana-dependent populations worldwide, as well as contributing to the reduction of genetic diversity in the global banana crop.

.

LA Times on Banana Museum

Best banana picture ever - from the banana museum's website

Fake memoirist, real novelist, and - best of all - Oprah nemesis James Frey mentions Altadena banana museum; Los Angeles Times uses "banana expert" (me) to confirm that it exists (or existed; it has since moved to Hesperia, in the California high desert.)

About the picture: The proprietor of the museum, Ken Banister, has his shirt open at the belly. He is standing above a "banana club" logo, and next to a pile of bananas. A man who has burst into flames runs in front of them. To Ken's left a child on an adult's shoulders seems to stare in amazement. To the right, two adults laugh. The man closer to Banister seems to be applauding. All the way on the left side of the picture, a man in a pork pie hat and red knee socks, sitting and only half in frame, appears to be indifferent to the spectacle.

What in heck is going on here?

We Throw a Lot of Good Food Away

Image: New York Times

...including brown bananas, which have lots of uses, including banana bread.

Great story in the New York Times. More on the Wasted Food Blog.

This is not meant to be the Chiquita blog, but...

You really can't help it when you see stuff like this. What does this mean? I can't tell, because - and this is another news flash - Chiquita has redesigned its website so that it de-emphasizes bananas - and made it unnavigable in the process (I tried to find some kind of marketing info on the sticker. No luck.) But even weirder, given the company's recent history of terrorist payoffs in Colombia - money which went directly for arms purchases - is the slogan itself. Fights for you? Does anybody at the banana giant's corporate headquarters think about this stuff?

I would love to see some normal news come out of Chiquita - but there doesn't seem to be much, other than an announcement of increased profits thanks to higher banana prices in the first quarter of this year.

Chiquita's bad news leads to a bigger question. As I noted in the post before this one, Dole and Del Monte have also now been accused of paying protection money in Colombia. But it is Chiquita that is getting hammered in the media. I wonder if the company regrets going public. Probably. But the reason it is getting the beat down it is now receiving - in my view - is not because it went public. The reason is that it went public only halfway. Watch the 60 Minutes interview again, if you haven’t already. Chiquita CEO Aguirre is ducking and covering. He's pretending to take responsibility while not taking responsibility. The company is getting hit because it is claiming to have done the right thing when it clearly didn't, and that leads to the suspicion that it went public not because it felt that it was ethical, but because bad stuff was coming down the pike, and it needed some quick cover.

"60 Minutes" on Chiquita and Colombia - were Dole and Del Monte guilty, too?

Though it fails to mention Chiquita's long and bloody history in Colombia, the CBS News program's report - which aired on May 11 - detailing the banana giant's payments to terrorist groups in Colombia, and the consequences of those payments, is remarkably hard-hitting, and features a sit-down interview with Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre, who - to me - dodges a lot of questions. The big scoop here are accusations from a jailed Colombian terrorist that Dole and Fresh Del Monte also made payments.

What do you think? Is the report fair? Is Chiquita ducking responsibility.

Chiquita's Banana profits and new African plantations

Just a couple of quick notes from Chiquita's first-quarter financial report, issued May 1. The company made a $31.7 million profit - after losing $3.4 million the same period last year - fueled mostly by surging banana prices. What's interesting is that the actual amount of bananas people bought dropped - by one percent in the U.S., and fourteen percent in Europe - but because of bad weather and other market conditions that have constrained supply, prices have shot up: by 18% and 26% in the two selling areas, respectively. This made Chiquita CEO Fernando Aguirre very happy: "Banana pricing is very acceptable," he told investors, noting that prices have held pretty steady for over a decade.

The other bit of interesting news is the soon-to-come opening of the first big Chiquita plantations in Africa, in Mozambique and Angola. The reason these commercial banana farms are being launched on that continent is to get around European tariff regulations that make Latin America-originated bananas expensive to sell in Europe. But it was the cutting of land for new Cavendish (that's the world's commercial banana) plantations in Asia two decades ago that led to the spread of Panama Disease there; that malady is now epidemic and threatens the world's banana supply. There was no mention in Chiquita's earnings call - nor has the company ever mentioned - what precautions it is taking to make sure the new plantations it is opening, or the transportation networks that connect the plantations to shipping areas, will be effectively sealed from existing banana crops. I can't even begin to state how important this is in Africa, where bananas are a major subsistence crop, though I can tell you why Chiquita has made no such statement: because it has been proved, over and over, that it can't be done.

And in good news, Chiquita has just posted a fantastic "cool stuff" page, with tons of old print and television ads, banana stickers, and other archival material. I'll highlight some of it in the future, but it is definitely worth exploring.

News article on Chiquita's earnings call here. Download a pdf of Chiquita's results here. Listen to audio here.

Gallery: Fair-Trade Plantation in Ecuador

Image: Guardian newspaper, UK

A good slideshow from the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, featuring a plantation in Ecuador operated under the "Fair Trade" system, which guarantees workers a decent living wage and benefit. This is especially important in Ecuador, the world's largest banana exporting nation, which has weak labor laws. It is, however, hard to say exactly how much good banana workers derive from Fair Trade - such fruit has very low market share, and the actual benefits aren't clear (for example, in the gallery linked below, one of the positives is touted as labor-saving cable systems that make it easier to move bunches to packing areas, as opposed to carrying them manually. The reality is that most commercial plantations use cable systems - because they're more efficient, not out of altruism.)

The trick with banana fair trade is going to be figuring out how to make it work with a product that is, essentially, an ultra-cheap commodity. Fair-trade coffee is successful because people are willing to pay $14 a pound for it - you can match it up with high-quality beans and essentially offer a premium product at a higher price. Right now, the most successful fair trade bananas sold in the U.S. are offered as an ingredient in Ben & Jerry's Chunky Monkey ice cream; again, that's a product folks are willing to pay extra for. It remains to be seen whether Fair Trade bananas can be sold in large scale at the low prices most American consumers would probably demand. I hope the answer is yes.

CORRECTION: Fair Trade Chunky Monkey is - it seems - only offered in the UK version of the flavor (see this video, from the Brit B&J website; click on the "Ecuador" link at the bottom.) I've got a request in to the ice cream makers' U.S. spokespeople for clarification.

Watch the Guardian slide show here.

The bananas from the plantation pictured in the Guardian essay are marketed in the US under the OKE brand name. Find out more about them - including where to buy them - here

Help Flooded Ecuadorian Banana Farmers

Images from Oke's Flickr photostream.

To assist washed-out Ecuadorean banana farmers, fair-trade importer Oke is taking donations to buy a Bobcat earth-mover. It's a worthy cause. Read about it here.

More on fair trade, Ecuador's floods, and rising banana prices here, here, here, and especially here.

Suspended? For this?

Image: Lake County News-Sun

This seems draconian. Even worse is the kid quoted at the end, who sucks up and accepts his sentence.

ZION, Ill., April 23 (UPI) -- A Zion, Ill., high school has suspended 11 seniors involved in a prank that featured a student in a gorilla costume chasing banana-clad seniors in the hallways.

Zion-Benton Township High School handed seven-day suspensions to the costumed students, who phoned in sick before the stunt and wore pantyhose over their heads to conceal their identities during the prank, the Waukegan (Ill.) News-Sun reported Wednesday.

Some of the students said the school overreacted with the harsh punishment.

"What's funnier than a gorilla chasing bananas through a school? Nothing," said Andrew Leinonen, the prank's mastermind and the student who dressed as a gorilla. "It was a harmless prank."

However, others said they were just thankful the school decided not to bar them from prom and graduation.

"We think this is a just punishment," said Brendon Epker, one of the students who dressed as bananas. "We broke rules we shouldn't have broken."

A longer and more explanatory account of the whole affair is here.

A slideshow is here.

These kids deserve medals, not demerits.

Eat bananas, ensure a male heir

The recent Oxford University study showing that eating breakfast made women more likely to conceive male children than females centered specifically around potassium consumption, meaning bananas, whose phallic nature - in some cultures, at least - is believed to have an influence on what goes on in the womb.

"We were able to confirm the old wives' tale that eating bananas, and so having a high potassium intake, was associated with having a boy," said Fiona Matthews, who led the study of 740 first-time mothers published in the strangely-named journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B."

So, there you have it. Do with it what you will. Read more here.

Adios, bananero...

When I visited Honduras, one of the most interesting people I met was Gene Osmark, a former Chiquita researcher who regaled me with stories of both the good - and bad - old days of banana company dominance in Latin America. Gene wasn't one to pull a punch, and my conversations with him were honest, fascinating, and sometimes shocking. I received word that Gene passed away last week; he was, as Ivan Buddenhagen - another renowned banana researcher - remarked, "one of the last of the old guard."

Comment: it is, perhaps, too easy to see that old guard as simply part of a system of exploitation and misery. It is more complicated than that. As a corporate entity, United Fruit - Chiquita - did great damage. It wouldn't be a stretch to call it evil. But many of the scientists who worked for the company tried hard to improve the land they grew bananas on and the lives of the people they lived amidst. This is especially true of the post-1950s era banana researchers, who acutely understood the history that they were a part of.

There are fewer and fewer of these original banana folk left. Anyone interested in the history of the banana industry in Latin America would do well to spend time getting information from a primary source. I recommend you check out "Banana People," a collection of first-hand accounts of life working for Chiquita, assembled by Clyde Stephens, a former bananero now living in Florida.

Here's a description of the book:

"This book is a collection of short stories by BANANA PEOPLE who lived in the Tropics and savored a unique period that is now past history. Fifteen writers relate their favorite adventures, anecdotes, history, intrigues of the banana business and exciting plantation lifestyles of a bygone era. Contributors had a wide range of tropical experiences and include a former president of the United Fruit Company, vice presidents, engineers, a medical doctor, research scientists, accountants, pilots, professors and others."

You can order it for $20, plus shipping, here.

Baboon Prefers Bananas over Kittehs. Thank Goodness.

Though one's gotta say, kitteh don't look too happeh.

Bill Gates funds Banana Research

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has begun