Bananas are dying

The Independent, on 22nd May 2008, had an article looking at the disease affecting the banana and how it’s over production has lead to its down fall. It says,

Below the headlines about rocketing food prices and rocking governments, there lays a largely unnoticed fact: bananas are dying. The foodstuff, more heavily consumed even than rice or potatoes, has its own form of cancer. It is a fungus called Panama Disease, and it turns bananas brick-red and inedible.

There is no cure. They all die as it spreads, and it spreads quickly. Soon – in five, 10 or 30 years – the yellow creamy fruit as we know it will not exist.

What lead to this has been a long list of errors from companies more interested in shareholders’ profits and short term gains. It seems this problem is mainly down to unregulated capitalism at its worst. Greedy men doing evil things for the love of money.

The book is “Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World” by Dan Koeppel.