It pleases me to know that Stanley likes bananas.
Also, Stanley post!
Oh man, this could have far-reaching consequences on our household.
FWIW, they've been saying this for easily 10, and possible 20, years. I'm not saying it's chicken-littlest, I'm just saying that whatever's happening, it's been slow-moving, which presumably raises the odds of finding a solution.
It might also just raise the odds of everyone ignoring it and kicking the can continually down the road!
The difficulty is that apparently bananas are even tougher to breed than pandas.
My concern is that we will end up with Monsanto, or their ilk, owing the rights to the next big banana, and using them to extract rents from impoverished tropical farmers.
So my dislike of banana's finally pays off. Awesome.
Bandanas are harder to breed then both pandas and bananas.
8: Despite their fondness for hanky panky.
What JRoth said. I've been hearing "No more Cavendish" since I think the early 2000s. We might even have talked about it here before.
At the very least, Monsanto probably won't be worse than United Fruit.
http://www.unfogged.com/archives/comments_8858.html#859484
All I'm finding is this mention from 2008, but that's eight years.
Man, monocultures cause a lot of problems, huh? Oh, well, nothing for it but to identify a new monoculture to switch to.
They could solve the problem by spraying the trees with Lotramin, but nobody wants a banana that smells like jock itch.
I hate bananas with a passion and haven't eaten one from choice for fifty years, but I recognise that a lot of people like them and I don't want to spoil their fun. So I say this to the big banana purchasers:
For fuck's sake there are dozens of varieties out there!* Change your marketing strategy, like now, to persuade consumers that it's fun to try different kinds, as they already do with apples and pears, so that growers aren't forced into monocultures which are bound to undergo periodic crises like this. You could even work on improving a bunch of varieties at the same time, because if you don't this is going to happen again and again.
*When I was a kid in east Africa we often bought bananas with a bright red skin. They were awesome, although they were smaller than bloody Cavendish, so Chiquita wouldn't have cared.
I am disappointed that Bob omitted to warn us of the coming banana apocalypse!
I was literally just talking to people about how great bananas are if you live where they grow. Maybe it was the varieties -- Samoa had a bunch of different ones -- but i think it was also the freshness.
I'm refraining from the obvious reply to 14.
The tiny little sweet ones, misi luki, were the best, but they were all good.
18: I could go steal the green house bananas and see.
14: Apparently the solution is to eat some fake banana candy, because that's the flavor that got picked for them due to it being mostly how the Gros Michel tasted, and now seems bizarre because it has very little in common with the Cavendish banana.
That said the idea that we'd end up with a less shitty banana (and god are bananas ever shitty) is probably unwarranted optimism: we could just as easily end up with an even crappier one. And that seems to be the pattern with large scale fruit farming too, so I'd say it's at least as likely as not that that's what would happen if we get another one at all.
The NYTimes editorial from 2008 says that "the fungus is expected to reach Latin America in 5 to 10 years, maybe 20". It has apparently not made the jump to Latin America yet, so we're right on track.
Change your marketing strategy, like now, to persuade consumers that it's fun to try different kinds
Its not a marketing strategy, its a matter of most types of bananas not being easy to ship and ripen on schedule, which are the primary advantages of the Cavendish. So, maybe a massive overhaul of supply chain practices would do it, but maybe not.
A type of banana that had to be flown north to market might not be a good thing for the environment.
Public tastes have brought back more variety in apples, so I suppose there's hope, even if bananas are harder to breed.
The local Asian market usually has at least 3 varieties, plus plantains. Almost always small red ones and small green* ones, and then maybe the third kind is cavendish, but I don't look closely. The small ones are so pricey I won't get them even though it would qualify as a fun/interesting thing for the kids.
*presumably underripe? Although I feel as if I've seen them as they start to brown, and they're still pretty green, compared with cavendish
22.1 is fascinating, although it also makes me not want to eat a Gros Michel. Well, that and homophobia.
Sometimes Whole Foods has smaller, red bananas. They're not bad. We go through about six bananas a day in this household. Don't die, bananas.
27. There are varieties which are green when ripe.
I'm pretty much with Chris Y in this. If we lose the Cavendish, we'll just have to eat one of the literally hundreds of other varieties of banana and banana-like fruit.
The obvious solution if they don't have a banana that ships well is to smash up the bananas and put them in little bags the way they do with apples.
14, 19: Low hanging fruit.
My dad (1925-2010 RIP) used to say that bananas "nowadays" weren't as good as the ones when he was a kid. He liked fake banana candy too. Circumstantial evidence of something or another!
I think fake banana candy tastes of acetone, but maybe that's just me.
I believe bananas are the future/gros michel was tasty in the day/cylindrer of fibrous fruit inside/convenient yellow hide/makes it easier to peel and eat.
I decided long ago never to slip on any one's peel...
36
In HS I used to do research with isoamyl acetate, and it would give me a headache even using the fume hood. Now anything about fake banana candy makes me nauseous. Also, I like my bananas on the green and more tasteless side, so I imagine I really would not have like the Gros Michel.
4: And what if continually kicking the can down the road is the solution, huh? Where will we be then?
when i was in Thailand a few years ago, we kept getting these little yellow bananas in huge bunches, and they were fantastic! so when i got back to the US, i bought a bunch of the little bananas at our local supermarket - blech. dry and flavorless and tough.
Hey, is that thing they used to say about smoking banana peels true? Are they really psychoactive?
Ah, never mind. Apparently not.
41: I'll bet that the peels of Gros Michel banana's were psychoactive and that the fungus that wiped them out was actually introduced through a plot by the Bureau of Narcotics.
Apparently you can still find the Gros Michel, but you probably have to leave the first world to do it.
41- burning banana leaves smell really similar to burning pot leaves though.
I looked into buying a Gros Michel tree, which is doable. I would be happy to wait ten years for my taste of a Gros Michel. But then I didn't have a yard in a tropical climate to go with it.
You could make a greenhouse. Out of cob. And glass.
Just to cover the bases, when I go to tropical countries, I eat as many kinds of bananas as I can. Perhaps I have unknowingly had a Gros Michel banana. But I doubt it. I haven't been to all that many banana-growing countries, and none in Central America.
On the internet, no one knows if you're a fungus.
Are you implying there might be a fungus among us?
Perhaps this will be the theme song of the future (just as it seems to have been in the past)
46: Also, bananas come ripe very inconveniently. Once a year or so, you get a stalk with dozens on it, simultaneously. If you're not a commercial grower, there's nothing to do but frantically give them away before they rot.
And the sap that leaks from the cut stalk stains like you would not believe. It's awful.
Burro bananas are delicious, but they take longer to ripen.
If I had a banana, I'd banana in the morning.
Banana post banana post bo banana bost, fanana fana fo fananana fost, mee my mo mananan most, banana post.
I'd better learn to make Something Else Foster, just in case.
Banana banana Banana banana banana banana Banana banana.
Largely because of this thread I bought some short, stubby bananas yesterday. Will they be tasty? Who knows! The likeliest outcome is that I never eat any because I'm too put off by the trials involved in eating a novel fruit.
Largely because of this thread I let Nia pick out small red bananas at the store last night, though mostly because for some reason the bunch cost less than a dollar and so I'm not out any real money if everyone thinks they're gross. I think all bananas are gross, so I'm no help there.
I think all bananas are gross
But then we already knew that ugh sorry that seems more tasteless than usual but I can't stop myself
I knew I was setting myself up for that, but I didn't want to have to be tactless enough to put the disclaimer that no really I only do mean that literally.
Largely because of this thread I've been refraining from eating the one banana I have, instead referring to it mentally in a doomsday voice as "The Last Banana On Earth...(Possibly)."
A little 80s dance around the kitchen music.
Alas, wikipedia informs us that the little red bananas are a Cavendish group cultivar, so they're probably doomed with the rest.
Update to 58: either these bananas are taking their sweet sweet time to ripen or they just suck.