Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

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!

Have Banana Prices Gone Insane?

Flooding in Ecuador - the world's largest exporter of bananas - have raised prices of what is traditionally the cheapest fruit in the supermarket. Since January, 2008 - if you buy bananas, you've certainly noticed this - prices have gone way up: in Los Angeles, from about 59 cents to as much as 79 cents a pound.

So far, the largest Ecuadorean banana company - Bonita - has made no statement on the crisis, and banana sales have remained strong - but flat - because the fruit remains the lowest-priced on store shelves. But the situation is an illustration of how fragile the banana market is; if disease should strike Latin America, prices will go up far more than the floods have prompted them to, and for the first time in over a century, apples (which now cost between about a dollar and three dollars a pound) could once again be a better value than the world's favorite fruit.

Despite the troubles, former Ecuadorean presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa remains the richest man in his country, and child labor laws there remain weak. Pressure to keep banana prices down in the face of the flooding crisis will likely affect neither.

This ninny says bananas disprove evolution...

This fellow, Ray Comfort, is using a banana to prove that a "designer" created the universe. The general idea is that only an intelligent force could have created such a naturally convenient item (with a protective wrapper, an easy-to-use "pull tab," perfect shape, etc.) There is so much stupid about this that it would be laughable, if so many people didn't fall for it. The reality, simply put, is that the banana is so "perfect" for human consumption because we've spent seven millennia - longer than just about any other crop - cultivating it to be so. In other words, since we've selected and reselected the best bananas, finally arriving at the one we eat today, the fruit - rather than proving that an unseen hand created it - tells us the opposite: we're the ones who made it what it is, and we used the tools of evolution to do so.

Oh, and also, the other guy in the video is washed-up child star Kirk Cameron, of "Growing Pains." Crediblity achieved.

Watch the video...if you want to read more about Comfort, or the Athiest Test, click below (you'll also find out why peanut butter contains yet another proof of a willful creator of the universe...)

What does Keira Knightley have to do with our endangered banana?

She's shooting a movie called "The Duchess," where she plays Lady Cavendish, the 18th Century Duchess of Devonshire. Here's the description of the movie from AceShowbiz:

"Duchess chronicles the life of 18th century aristocrat Georgiana, duchess of Devonshire, an ancestor of Princess Diana who was alternately celebrated and reviled for her extravagant political and personal lives. Accompanying Knightley in the cast are Ralph Fiennes as William Cavendish, the fifth Duke of Devonshire, and Dominic Cooper as Charles Grey, the second Earl Grey."

In my book, I explain that our banana - the endangered one - is called the Cavendish. It is named after the Duchess's son, the third William Cavendish, and the sixth duke. This Cavendish - who never married, and was known as "the bachelor duke" - spent his time building up the family estate's gardens and greenhouses. Around 1830, he received a sample banana plant that had been brought to England from the South Pacific. The Cavendish banana's stock eventually was brought to the Caribbean, where it became the "mother plant" for most of the fruit we eat today.

Visitors to ex-banana castle are welcomed by goddess Venus with open no arms.

Converting former factories to art spaces isn't new - but turning an old banana processing facility into one is. This ex-industrial building, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was once the home of D. Theodoredis & Sons Inc., a Chiquita subsidiary that distributed fruit to markets in the northeastern U.S. The old plant included ripening rooms - where temperature and atomosphere are controlled to keep fruit green as long as possible - and was a receiving point for fruit brought by trains from ports along the eastern seaboard.

The 63,000 square foot plant was repurposed in 1998 as the "Banana Factory," a community art center that includes galleries, classrooms, studios, and a theater (the "factory" part of the name is a misnomer, but it somehow feels appropriate; I wonder if locals called it that historically.)

I'm working on finding out how long the Theodoredis operation ran, when it was sold to Chiquita, and when it was shuttered. I'd like to hear from you if you know anything about the old banana operation, if you've visited the art center, and especially if you can make any before-and-after comparisons. Leave a comment or email me at the link on my "About" page.

Here's a link to the Banana Factory.

The Last Bananero

The Bananeros - or "Banana Men" - were the gringos who tamed the Central American jungle and established the banana industry that we know today. They were railroad builders and cowboys, botanists and explorers. In my book, I explain the more-than-problematic history of the bananero culture, and how it led to a century of misery and bloodshed. Here's a first-hand account by one of the few surviving bananeros I met during a visit to Honduras...

THE NIGHT AFTER I VISITED FHIA, THE EXPERIMENTAL BANANA FARM IN HONDURAS, Juan Fernando Aguilar and his wife picked me up in their battered pickup truck; we drove past a few roadside markets – huge bunches of plantain hung, old style, in open-front, tin and plywood shacks – to meet one of the last “United Fruit” men living in Honduras; "George" (I've changed his name) was burly and cheerful, and I instantly recognized a New York accent, surprising him, because he hadn’t been to the city in 50 years. We sat on the patio of tiny restaurant outside of San Pedro Sula, the city closest to Chiquita’s old La Lima compound. We ate fried fish and salad with shredded cabbage and tomatoes, washed down with bottles of the local Salva Vida – “Lifesaver” – beer. I found myself alternately charmed and horrified as he described his four decades working for the big banana company. The tale wasn’t terribly heavy with political awareness. It felt more like I was listening to a nostalgic boy, spinning tales of the Wild West.
“United Fruit came to this country,” he told me, “and brought money and jobs – and all we took out were bananas.”