Bananas: Monocultures and Diseases!

 I am reading, "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World," by Dan Koeppel. According to the book, the Cavendish banana is under threat from a fungal disease that has already rendered the Gros Michel variety non-commercially viable.

Since there is nearly a world wide agricultural monoculture of Cavendish bananas, the disease could wipe out most of them. So when I saw Chiquita minis in the grocery store, I was excited to think that another variety is being sold. Of course I bought some, which you can see on the left. The Cavendish banana is there for comparison.

These minis are a variety called Piseng Mas and they are extremely sweet when allowed to ripen. They are not ripe until they turn brown.

The mini has a thinner peel and has fruit that is slightly darker than that of Cavendish bananas as you can see on the right.


The sweet taste of bananas belies the brutal agricultural history of the fruit. Huge companies manipulated leaders in Central and South America and sucked the life out of workers in return for meager wages.


Gastronomista has posted some interesting historical banana commerical materials that you might want to see. 

Pablo Neruda wrote a moving poem about the banana struggles, along with a translation which you can see below.

United Fruit Company

When the trumpet sounded, everything
on earth was prepared
and Jehovah distributed the world
to Coca Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors and other entities:
The Fruit Company Inc.
reserved the juiciest for itself,
the central coast of my land,
the sweet waist of America.
It re-baptized the lands
"Banana Republics"
and on the sleeping dead,
on the restless heroes
who'd conquered greatness,
liberty and flags,
it founded a comic opera:
it alienated free wills,
gave crowns of Caesar as gifts,
unsheathed jealousy, attracted
the dictatorship of the flies,
Trujillo flies, Tachos flies,
Carias flies, Martinez flies,
Ubico flies, flies soppy
with humble blood and marmelade,
drunken flies that buzz
around common graves,
circus flies, learned flies
adept at tyranny.

The Company disembarks
among the blood-thirsty flies,
brim-filling their boats that slide
with the coffee and fruit treasure
of our submerged lands like trays.

Meanwhile, along the sugared up
abysms of the ports,
indians fall over, buried
in the morning mist:
a body rolls, a thing
without a name, a fallen number,
a bunch of dead fruit
spills into the pile of rot.


Cuando sonó la trompeta, estuvo
todo preparado en la tierra,
y Jehova repartió el mundo
a Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda,
Ford Motors, y otras entidades:
la Compañía Frutera Inc.
se reservó lo más jugoso,
la costa central de mi tierra,
la dulce cintura de América.

Bautizó de nuevo sus tierras
como "Repúblicas Bananas,"
y sobre los muertos dormidos,
sobre los héroes inquietos
que conquistaron la grandeza,
la libertad y las banderas,
estableció la ópera bufa:
enajenó los albedríos
regaló coronas de César,
desenvainó la envidia, atrajo
la dictadora de las moscas,
moscas Trujillos, moscas Tachos,
moscas Carías, moscas Martínez,
moscas Ubico, moscas húmedas
de sangre humilde y mermelada,
moscas borrachas que zumban
sobre las tumbas populares,
moscas de circo, sabias moscas
entendidas en tiranía.

Entre las moscas sanguinarias
la Frutera desembarca,
arrasando el café y las frutas,
en sus barcos que deslizaron como bandejas el tesoro
de nuestras tierras sumergidas.

Mientras tanto, por los abismos
azucarados de los puertos,
caían indios sepultados
en el vapor de la mañana:
un cuerpo rueda, una cosa
sin nombre, un número caído,
un racimo de fruta muerta
derramada en el pudridero.
--Pablo Neruda, 1950