Author: Jeremy Cherfas

Paul Krugman, the economist, blogs over at the New York Times that he is reading Dan Koeppel’s “Banana.” This is A Good Thing, not only because the book is a good read but also because there’s just a slim chance that Mr Krugman will eventually make a contribution to the debate around the costs and benefits of conserving agricultural biodiversity. Strangely, Krugman seems to think that the book is “not especially relevant to current events.” Maybe not directly, but there are certainly lessons to be learned and parallels to be drawn.

I, however, am not about to do that. Instead, I’m going to jump aboard Krugman’s coat-tails ((Not an easy trick when the Great Man completely ignores the little flea upon his back and fails to approve the little flea’s comment.)) and address some of the points raised by some of the people who commented on his post.

Michael Donnelly asks, “Does that book explain why bananas are so cheap? 49 cents a pound still at my grocery store during a time of rampant food inflation.”

Yes and no. One reason some bananas are so cheap is that stores use them as a loss leader. They’re so perishable, even with careful management, that it pays the store to entice you in with bananas at a temptingly low price, hoping that once you’re in you’ll then buy something more profitable as well. The store makes less of a loss on a cut-price banana it sells than on a high-priced one it doesn’t.

David says, “Koeppel also explains why bananas used to taste better: the variety of banana we get in most supermarkets is thick-skinned and bred for hardiness rather than taste. Travel to Puerto Rico or Latin America and the bananas are locally grown, of different varieties, and delicious. Does globalization drive our goods toward mediocrity?”

I’m not going to go down the mediocrity road, but the assumption that the modern Cavendish banana was bred for hardiness rather than taste is not true. It wasn’t really bred for anything. It just happened to be resistant to Panama disease, which wiped out previous commercial plantations dominated by the variety Gros Michel. As it happens, Gros Michel does taste better, at least to me, but it can no longer be grown on the massive scale needed for global trade. Cavendish is heading in the same direction.

In similar vein, Nick S’s comment that grocery store bananas are so tasteless because Americans get theirs from the mainland, while the British get theirs from their former Caribbean island colonies, is probably not entirely correct. More likely, the British simply took better care of their bananas during ripening.

Tim Kane said, “If you like reading about the history of commodities, then I recommend to everyone that they read the book that started this genre: Henry Hobhouse’s “The Seeds of Change: Six plants that transformed mankind.”

Well, call me an old nit-picking fuddy-duddy, but the original version of Hobhouse’s book (which certainly did not start the genre) was “Seeds of Change: Five plants that transformed mankind.” He added coca at a later date.

Skeptonomist asked, “How do they keep the bananas from turning black in those refrigerated banana boats?”

The bananas aren’t yet ripe. In fact, they are very under-ripe. They are shipped green, and then ripened by raising the temperature and pumping in ethylene gas, which ripening bananas produce and which speeds ripening in unripe fruit. Which is why a good way of ripening other fruit, and that includes tomatoes, is to enclose them in a paper bag with a ripe banana. The banana gives off ethylene, which spurs other fruits to ripen. To get back to the main point, unripe bananas do not go black in the fridge, ripe ones do.

That’ll do for now, although if you’re interested there’s an interview with Koeppel at National Public Radio. (I haven’t listened yet.) Crucial points to bear in mind:

Despite being paragons of globalization, bananas are actually much more important locally than internationally. Most bananas are eaten within 25 km of where they were grown. India’s domestic consumption alone is greater than the international trade. And in much of Africa bananas are the number one source of energy.

Although there are hundreds of banana varieties, the individuals of each are genetically identical. Because varieties are multiplied by “cuttings” and because sexual recombination is so damn difficult to achieve in bananas, breeding is incredibly difficult. And because individuals are genetically uniform, a threat to one is a threat to the whole plantation. So when a pathogen mutates to attack a previously resistant variety — as Panama disease has mutated to attack Cavendish — and when there are no known fungicides, what price then the world’s favourite desert fruit?

My question to Paul Krugman, then, is this: what contribution, if any, should the big banana companies make to banana conservation and breeding?