Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World

When I was a child in Bangladesh one of my "charming" activities would be to give the local banana seller some unsolicited advice. As he walked down the street carrying his banana-bunch I would shout down from the balcony and tell him which cultivars my family preferred, and that he better get with the program if he wanted our business. What he had on offer was similar to the Cavendish which you encounter in American supermarkets; my family tended to prefer a smaller, sweeter, variety which was often seeded. Despite all the problems (e.g., pathogen load) associated with living in an underdeveloped tropical country, if you had some marginal income the diversity of fruit accessible because of local abundance is something that American supply chains can never recreate.¹

In Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World Dan Koeppel uses the story of this fruit as the window through which one might examine the intersection of biology, economics, politics and ethics; in other words, modernity. Though the book's title is obviously a bit hyperbolic, I was surprised to find out that the banana is currently America's #1 fruit in terms of consumption, not the apple! And of course it is important to note that the plantain is much more than a snack for millions across the world. This reality frames the overarching plot point in Koeppel's narrative: the fact that a disease is sweeping across banana plantations and the ubiquity of this fruit might be under threat.

Unlike the local cultivars which I was familiar with as a child the modern banana trade is very much an international enterprise. Its origin dates back to the first era of globalization during the 19th century as American entrepreneurs assembled several transnational corporations on the backs of the banana trade. If Koeppel's narrative is to be believed the banana business was a classic case of vertical integration, as the supply-chain was initiated via colonization of Central American nations (what would become "banana republics"), technological advances enabled the transport of the fragile fruit from the tropics to American ports, and finally a professional marketing campaign transformed an exotic into a staple. The company which we know today as Chiquita illustrates how economies of scale and industralization shift the hinges of history. To say that the banana changed the world might be poetic license, but the political histories of several Latin American nations were clearly shaped by the banana trade in a very concrete manner. The modern history of the banana sketches the transformation of microscale agricultural art into macroscale agriculture science on the supply side, and the concomittant shift from local tastes to mass markets on the demand side.

But the story of the banana is more than economics, it is ultimately one of biology. Up until the mid-20th century the bananas which most Americans were familiar with was the Gros Michel, a variety which required less care in transport because of its thicker skin. Unfortunately for these economic fundamentals biology intervened; commercial bananas are generally seedless clones. As such they are ideally suitable to being taken down in one fell swoop by epidemics, and so it was with the "Big Mike." Luckily for us another clonal lineage with properties similar enough to the Gros Michel, the Cavendish, emerged to step in and satsify the needs of the market. Apparently most Americans weren't even aware of the shift as it was occurring!

The contemporary strain of Panama disease threatens to do to the same to the Cavendish. Koeppel offers an interesting explanation for why these outbreaks are inevitable beyond the clonal character of commercial bananas; effective population size! Koeppel doesn't use exactly those words, but he explains how modern transportation creates a more interconnected pathogen pool. This means that if you take a clonal lineage and increase the sample space of possible pathogens to which it might be exposed, it stands to reason that you're increasing the probability of an outbreak! The same ultimate principle operative with adaptive acceleration of human evolution.

So what do we about the inevitable risk of disease? Of course there are local seeded cultivars which one might attempt to breed via conventional means, but it seems this is simply too slow a process. Replacements for the Cavendish are sub-optimal for a host of reasons (e.g., doesn't taste like a "banana" should). One way to increase the number of options involves genetic modification. It is here that one of the major themes within the book, the importance of bananas as a staple in much of Africa, comes to the fore. As I'm sure you know African nations have serious issues with agriculture exports to developed countries, especially the huge market of the European Union. Koeppel recounts in detail the hesitation of African agricultural scientists in making recourse to genetic modification because of possible banning from the European market. If there is one thing we can say, the world is about trade offs. Europeans wish to preserve their own indigenous farming traditions and communities, but one cost to this is that it stunts the ability of Third World peasants to develop an export economy. Additionally, the aversion to genetic modification means that many African nations are reluctant to take this short-cut for fear of hamstringing their access to European markets.

It seems in the case of plantains the leap to genetic modification is occurring because though an export market is important and ideal, subsistence is critical, and disease resistant staples must be found at any cost. Whether it is in the domain of economics, politics or ethics, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World shows that reality is constrained by trade offs. On the one hand industrial agriculture reduces the price and increases the accessibility of exotic fruits, but on the other hand it generally encourages monocultures which are vulnerable to the caprice of mother nature. Human aversion to the idea of fish genes spliced into a banana might be natural, and as a subjective preference one need not find it objectionable. But when it entails possible famine in other nations because of consequent avoidance of genetic modification so as to cater to the aforementioned aesthetic preferences, one must take a step back and wonder at the true price of buying "natural." At the end of the day a world without the banana is conceivable, but the issues which Koeppel touches upon are generalizable to a modern economy contingent upon scientific advances. The ultimate parables are universal.

Note: The Banana website.

Update: One portion of my post above needs some elaboration:

Despite all the problems (e.g., pathogen load) associated with living in an underdeveloped tropical country, if you had some marginal income the diversity of fruit accessible because of local abundance is something that American supply chains can never recreate.

I'm not dissing modern economics and agricultural science here. Just noting, as Koeppel emphasizes, that nature places limits on the ability to transport particular food-stuffs efficiently to economies of scale. Perhaps one day we'll find cheaper & more efficient ways to preserve fruits, I don't know. Modern agriculture has on radically increased the ability of the average person to purchase a wide array of goods all things being equal. I suspect in Singapore many more tropical fruits can be had simply because of proximity. I just want to clarify this because to a great extent I led a privileged life as a small child in Bangladesh, and much of the population lived on the margins of subsistence.

1 - I want to be clear here that most Bangladeshis obviously didn't get to enjoy the largresse of the local biodiversity. They were poor.