How I ended up viewing this video is a long story. You know how sometimes you think about one thing, that leads to another, and pretty soon you end up some place totally unexpected?
Anyway, bananas are sometimes an example held up as to why we need genetic engineering. Banana breeding is very difficult, and has been pursued by experts for many years. Habitats for wild bananas, and crucially the bat that was their primary pollinator, have mostly been destroyed by man. We also don’t have enough germplasm in store in genebanks. We are reaching the end of life of the ‘cavandish’ banana we all know because of disease pressure.
The solution we are all told is that we have to accept GM bananas.
Of course a major part of the problem is we insist on intensively cultivating monocultures of bananas in chemical intensive environments, causing many of the the disease problems.
Here’s a small group of people trying to find a new public domain solution, targeted towards small farmers.
There are several fallacies being promulgated by the Banana Mafia. Bananas are not particularly threatened.
What is threatened is the large field monoclonal culture of bananas. It has created an evolutionary playground for banana parasites and pathogens.
The insistence that bananas MUST be cultivated in monoclonal plantations; and that the export dessert market is intolerant of ‘anything but Cavendish’ is the myopic thinking that drives the mania.
80 years of banana breeding and untold millions later, there is still no breeder’s remedy for the grossly flawed agroecology.
It is not going to change. Unless you the metropolitan consumer demand change.
Shannon,
Thanks for the comment. I’m in complete agreement.
The next hurdle for us here in Europe will be legalizing the import of ‘anything but Cavendish’, or indeed anything that’s not intended to promote large scale commercial-monopoly-mafia agriculture.
Many people here in Europe are ready for different bananas, and a different way of thinking about food in general. Now to convince the politicians…
Patrick,
The Fair Trade Movement is a good start; because it acknowledges the supply side of the equation. Many banana producing countries depend on peasant smallholders for the bulk of their production.
No-one consults these folk on what they would prefer to produce and how it ought to be done.
The problem with Modern Trade is that the farmer and the consumer are totally isolated from each other by an impregnable wall of middlemen.
It’s not like, say, a Farmer’s Market of yore where real humans buy from real humans.
If we can “rehumanise” this arrangement: turn it into a situation where the consumer has an idea of from whom she’s ultimately buying – a real human with a face and a family; and usually quite poor – and the farmer understands to whom he’s selling – not simply the stereotype of an unbelievably rich and haughty white person in a faraway city that he will never ever see… then things might change.
I still have a degree of faith in humanity.
To exploit someone; canny politicians & marketers first take away his/her humanity.
We have to undo this.
Shannon,
Until a few years ago there was a quota system for bananas in Europe, that mostly favored former colonies. This meant at least consumers had a choice, and along side South American bananas were bananas from all over the world. Under these circumstances, it was an easy choice for most people to make, and few people bought from the banana mafia.
Now, under pressure from the US, this quota system has been scrapped, and it’s very hard to find bananas from smaller countries. You can only find them at vegetable markets. Because all the SA bananas are a few cents cheaper, all the supermarket chains and larger distribution networks have dropped all the alternatives. Many people are very irritated at this!
I can only speak for myself, and what I see in my neighborhood in Amsterdam, which may be a little more enlightened than most. I will not buy a banana that says Chiquita or Dole on it, and stores that sell these seem to mostly have piles of rotting bananas that no one will buy.
In the last few months I’ve started to see bananas with no company logo, all the shipping boxes hidden and the country of destination not given — just a Fairtrade sticker. For me that’s not enough! The larger companies can sell Fairtrade too.
I will only buy a banana that has a sticker of a small looking company on it, preferably labelled as coming from the Dominican Republic or another small country. When I get home, I Google the name on the sticker, and if I can’t find a YouTube video that shows me who’s growing and picking those bananas, I won’t buy that brand again.
I don’t see many bananas from Trinidad, but I don’t think you’re a former colony of Europe?
I can’t promise there are lots of people as radical as me who buy bananas here, but I can say there are lots of people who would eagerly consider alternatives. There are probably other people who read this blog who are as radical as me.
The main problem is Europe has a ‘white list’ of food plant varieties, and what’s not on that list is not legal for import. There’s lots of other red tape too.
If you breed a new banana on Trinidad, it will not be on this white list, and will not be legal for import unless a large food company sponsors it’s inclusion on this list.
The one thing I can promise you, is that if you breed a new dessert banana and tell me, I’ll spread the word and promote it! If you can get it to Europe, I can promise at least some people will want to buy it.