Bye Bye Bananas

The Gros Michel banana, is bigger, hardier and tastier than the variety we know, which is called the Cavendish. The Gros Michel is unavailable basically extinct.

The Gros Michel banana was hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish banana was adopted by the big banana companies - Dole and Chiquita - as it was resistant to that blight, the Panama disease a fungus. The Panama disease (Fusarium wilt of banana) is in Hawaii, and the Cavendish does not appear to be safe from this new strain, that appeared two 20 years ago in Malaysia and slowly at first, but is now moving at a quicker pace. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that though Panama disease has yet to hit the banana crops of Latin America, which feed our hemisphere, the question is not if this will happen, but when. Even worse, the malady has the potential to spread to dozens of other banana varieties, including African bananas.

Panama disease hasn't hit the Northern hemisphere yet, and the big banana companies appear unalarmed.

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