Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

Already in the second-hand bookshop.

Having used up my contracted allotment of books, I needed a bunch more to send to friends. I can get a special direct deal, but the price - considering the shipping time - isn't so great compared to Amazon. But since I happened to be in New York this week, I popped into what is arguably the world's greatest used bookstore, The Strand (University Place at 12th Street.) There, I found six brand-new copies - all with press releases tucked into them, most likely sold by members of the media after receiving them as review copies.

Not judging, here. But just sayin'!!!

Price: ten bucks each. No, they don't have any left.

The book is out!

Please buy it.

Is this how Panama Disease will arrive in Latin America?

Photo from Peace Corps online

So far, the banana-growing nations of South and Central America - which supply all of our fruit - have escaped the ravages of Panama Disease, the incurable blight that threatens the world's banana crop. As I say in my book, most scientists believe that the fungus will arrive in our hemisphere; the debate is over when. Panama Disease is soil-borne: it has spread through much of Asia in dirt, water, tools, and vehicles. The malady can leap oceans; it was first seen in Malaysia in the early 1990s. It has moved south, thousands of miles, from island to island and over water, and is now spreading rapidly throughout Australia (see this entry and this one.)

Now, officials in the Philippines - a nation where Panama Disease is a huge problem - say that their nation is going to start exporting bananas to the U.S. This will be the first time American consumers have been offered Pacific bananas, and there's reason to be concerned. On December 25, Philippine agriculture secretary Arthur Yap announced that, following the completion of a pest risk analysis, the U.S. had agreed to allow about 10 million tons of Cavendish bananas from Philippine plantations.

This could mean trouble for Latin America's as-yet-to-be afflicted banana crop.

BOOK REVIEW: New York Post reviews "Banana"

The paper I briefly worked for as a teenager says, briefly:

"Everyone knows the banana has appeal. But did you know that the banana is actually a giant berry and most of us eat just one kind, the Cavendish, even though there are more than 1,000 different types? And something called Panama disease is threatening to wipe out our favorite fruit? That Americans eat more bananas per year than apples and oranges combined!? Koeppel travels the globe to investigate, winding up with a surprisingly compelling read about the history, science, politics and future of the banana."

God help me...

...I think this is better than Scrabble. (OK, it really isn't, because the tiles get to be a mess and you run out of room on the table. But it remains a great game. I've been playing it non-stop since Christmas day.) The tiles come inside the banana pouch. You make up anagrams. No board required, so you can keep that banana in your pocket...

$14.99, direct from the manufacturer. Or, if you happen to be in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, or Dubai (!?!), you can buy it as a last-minute Christmas gift at Flight 001 stores, where I encountered it.

Are genetically modified bananas Australia's last hope?

Blown-down plantations in Queensland.

Australia has been fighting Panama Disease - the incurable blight that threatens the world banana crop - for nearly a decade. As I noted in an earlier post, that battle has recently become more difficult. Despite measures to quarantine the nation's banana farms, the malady is now spreading. Making matters worse was last spring's Cyclone Larry, which slammed Queensland - where most Australian bananas are grown - with winds of up to 200 mph. Over 85% of the nation's crop was destroyed (plantation managers in Latin America count wind damage - called "blow down" - as among their fiercest enemies.)

Now, Australian growers are desperate to save what remains. Panama Disease may make that impossible. A national tax on bananas has been instituted in order to fund research aiming to create a genetically modified, or GM, fruit (conventional breeding, over nearly 100 years of trying, has failed to come up with a fruit that resists the malady.) GM bananas are controversial - surveys have consistently shown that most people say they'd refuse to eat them - but they may be the only hope for Australia, and the dozens of other countries affected by Panama Disease. "The potential is there to have a thriving industry...but I think with the Panama [disease] we've really got a problem unless we start to tackle it head-on," Tom Day, of the Australian Banana Growers Council, told the Australian Broadcasting Company.

"Membrane-wrapped" bananas, branded with their breed name

My Dad sent this one in; it comes from Andy the Hobo Traveler's blog. Andy discovered the single-serve fruits at a 7-11 in Manilla; each banana costs about a quarter. "I can purchase one banana without them getting angry," Andy writes. "I am single, not married, to buy bananas even in the market is annoying, they do not like me to rip off two or three, and one is totally a great way to get them annoyed."

Single bananas for single buyers isn't all that new, but marketing them like candy bars is. Chiquita has just begun doing it in the U.S. We've got plenty of them at convenience stores here in Los Angeles, priced at about 75 cents.

Made in a plant that processes Peanuts®

Once again, scooped by BoingBoing. In Japan, Lucy and Snoopy hawk popcorn with "banana milk" flavor. Picture from Cory Doctorow's flickr stream.

PS, you can't buy the popcorn stateside, but somewhat yummy Nesquik banana milk is only as far as your local Circle-K, AM-PM, or Kum & Go or - and this is kind of weird - United Dairy Farmers convenience store. The latter is the family business that launched the career of Carl Lindner, former chairman of Chiquita.

I have been asked...

Whether or not I will wear a banana costume to readings (next: Vroman's Bookstore Pasadena, CA, January 10).

The answer is probably not. But if you wear one, I'll give you a free book. Here's a link to over 60 different yellow fruit suits to choose from.

The mystery of "going bananas."

Everybody knows what "going bananas" means: you've just turned plain cuckoo. But what are the origins of the phrase? Strangely, even the most authoritative source on Anglo etymology, The Oxford English Dictionary, isn't sure. The first known usage of the term has been credited to a 1968 academic publication, which noted that Kentucky college students were saying it.

It seems difficult to believe that such a common phrase could be less than four decades old. But there's some sense to the notion: it was during the late 1960s that rumors spread across university campuses that roasted banana peels had psychedelic properties, and that ingesting them could lead to hallucinations similar to ones brought on by LSD or psilocybin ("magic") mushrooms. (It isn't true, folks.) The reference to students in the OED entry - at least to me - gives weight to the argument that the phrase may only date back to the era of freak-outs, flower children, and free love.

Oxford suspects that the term is older.

Scooped by Boing Boing! Inject stuff into your bananas.

I'll just shoplift the post. I couldn't do better.

Mark Frauenfelder writes: "I think the DestapaBanana is a device that sucks the insides out of a banana while it is still in its peel, so that you can fill resulting cavity with the filling of your choice. The creator of DestapaBanana comments: 'The message is clear, DestapaBanana values and increases the current sales volumes, highlights bananas as a new type of desert and open the doors to more businesses and consumers.'"

There's also a video.