I just read a really interesting article about the history of the banana as we know it, or rather, don’t know it. The banana is dying from Panama Disease. The disease will likely destroy all bananas because industry has basically created and propagated only one type of banana. It’s only logic then that if disease strikes it will kill all bananas because there are no other varieties that might be resistant.
There is also a very bloody past to the banana industry, and so the name “banana republic”. It’s not a very nice history what’s been done to the banana, people, land, and forests relative to one of America’s favorite fruits that have graced lunchboxes what seems like forever. Oh there will be substitutions but the creamy sweet banana we once knew is looking at impending doom not as much from disease but from corporate greed in a deregulated industry.
The title of the article is: “Why Bananas are a Parable for Our Times,” by Johann Hari, a columnist for the London Independent. Read what deregulation did for the banana. As the title suggests and the writer aptly describes:
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.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/why-bananas-are-a-parable_b_156102.html