"But the GMO lightning rod distracts from the larger cautionary tale: Our reliance on monoculture to feed surging global populations is catching up with us."
A lot of old true-to-seed breeds of plants with diverse sets of attributes (like e.g. being more resistant to certain environmental conditions) haven't been cultivated for economic reasons and consequently have become extinct by now.
There are some enthusiasts trying to preserve those old breeds by running seed-banks but they have a hard time to do so even here in Europe because of corporations like Monsanto and their heavy lobbying trying to outlaw this movement.
Arche Noah:
"In the past 100 years we have lost about 75 percent of agricultural diversity worldwide."
I don't understand the downvotes either. The only way I can explain them is that there are certain categories of debate on HN which instantly attract large numbers of trolls intent on suppressing certain avenues of discussion.
It's indeed relevant. This is one of the biggest reason why monoculture and monsanto-like-GMO will never work (even if we knew how to properly create GMO, which is not the case and another subject).
If you create a GMO which is targeted to kill some insects or plants, there is then a huge incentive due to the large size of the crops and the lack of diversity for a new kind of insect / plant to resist to this GMO, it would have a massive competitive advantage and could spread much more quickly. There is only a benefit in the first years you are using it until the environment is adapting itself.
For anyone who's in interested in learning more about bananas, overthrowing governments and installing puppet dictators (before it was cool!) told in a true fast-paced rags-to-riches tale I highly recommend the book: "The Fish That Ate the Whale". So, so good.
Fun fact: if you have ever have those small banana lollies, they taste quite different to bananas now. That is because they were created during the time of the Gros Michel, the old type of banana.
And all bananas are cloned from the same variety, one reason this virus is such a concern.
> And all bananas are cloned from the same variety, one reason this virus is such a concern.
Did you read the article? One of the MAIN POINTS of this article was that this oft-repeated 'fact' is untrue. That, in fact, only a small portion of bananas are Cavendish grown for export, and that the non-cavendish (not cloned) bananas are also vulnerable to this fungus (not virus).
Fun fact, wild bananas are tiny and full of seeds. There's a lot of money being spent sequencing and understanding bananas in order to fight this kind of problem.
We grow one of these strains in our back yard here in southern Florida. You can't peel them and eat them like a "regular" banana, but you can slice the fruit from around the seeds (in the middle) and make some awesome banana bread the taste of which is quite simply impossible to achieve with store bought bananas. My kids say they taste "way more banana-y" than the ones from the store.
in south america there is no "banana". if you ask someone to buy bananas you get a very puzzled look.
there are tons of types of banana. and none have this sweet, tutti frutty flavour the banana imported into the US has.
so, your wild banana is just one kind of a hundred.
south asia is the the same as south america, but with a whole lot of other kinds of bananas.... so there is plenty of variety other than cavendish and wild. most of the wild ones around brazil have almost invisible seeds. and are very easy to peel. and they go from huge (nanica... ironically means tiny) to very small ones (prata, ouro)
The banana cultivar we usually eat is the Canvendish Banana. This cultivar is propagated asexually so in a sense all of the banana plants are of the same clone. Attempting to fight the fungus with genetic engineering is extra tricky because of this, because the banana plants do not reproduce.
But maybe someone finds a way. Anyway, I want to remind how papaya cultivation in Hawaii was almost wiped out by a virus disease, but they did some genetic engineering in the 1990's, and after that everything has been fine.
Mono culture where you clone one banana so all other bananas are exactly the same is by design stupid. Imagine you have a disease, compare it to a computer virus. Now exactly all other computers are running the same software, there is a virus that attacks them, all computers are knocked out in one blow. This is how the banana industry are handling it at the moment with cloning.
And yet that's exactly how most people are managing their computers, especially with the devops movement. They standardize on a single OS, a single set of software, and make the entire process identical and repeatable over the entire cluster. Managing servers is just impractical otherwise.
We don't eat bananas anymore in our house, largely for the reasons outlined in the article.
The thumbnail summary: bananas only started being widely consumed in the 1960s because of heavy marketing efforts by Central American railroad builders (they had to do something with the land along the sides of the newly built railroads, and bananas happened to fit).
They are heavily chemically treated, more than any other fruit. They've been a monoculture almost since Day 1.
Oh, another fun fact, those little stickers on bananas? They were one of the first examples of 'branding'
I didn't find this article all that well written or informative. I recommend Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World
I also happened to read John McPhee's Oranges at the same time. The contrast between the orange (an ancient fruit, widely consumed, hardy, with a rich literary tradition) and the banana is stark.
Both books, by the way, are great little studies in technology business. Techno-optimism, marketing, PR, globalization, manic CEOs; it's all there.
I think you're making it out to be worse than it really is.
Bananas are heavily chemically treated with ethylene, an inert gas which causes plants to ripen faster and is harmless to humans.
(Fun fact: It's why bananas are never put next to other fruit in the supermarket, because they will cause other fruit to ripen and spoil faster.)
Bananas also haven't been a monoculture since day 1 either - but have been developed that way through centuries of selective breeding. The article outlines the monoculture problem quite well, but doesn't really mention that it's because the consumable plant [mostly] only reproduces asexually.
What's wrong with using tiny stickers on fruit for 'branding'?
It's in Portuguese, but you can find a nice color table in page 7 with fruit and vegetable names (rows) and states (columns) providing an idea (red == bad).
Bananas do better than pretty much anything else tested there.
> Oh, another fun fact, those little stickers on bananas? They were one of the first examples of 'branding'
Not even close. Craftsman's marks -- the original trademarks -- are pretty much the original form of branding, and predate banana stickers by by probably on the order of a couple thousand years.
Related: DamnInteresting did a great article on the history of the banana and its reproductive quirks. It taught me about the historical species of banana that we no longer eat!
It is an ongoing research project. The Gros Michel itself is not gone; there are a number of plants still living, but currently they are trying to deal with the strange banana chromosomes: bananas have three chromosomes -- an odd number!
Banana trees that's used commercially are cloned by taking off-shoots, and are sterile. It's quite hard, if not impossible, to alter their genetics. Likewise it's hard to breed new banana trees that produce suitable fruits.
If it does go to South America, USA might be screwed. America imports all of it's bananas, Chile mostly. Hawaii makes a negligible amount that I think never even leaves Hawaii.
Side note, I've been interested in fruits, and the fruit trade so I've been trying to find out more information about how it all works. It is hard. Pretty much any hard data that comes out is from the USDA, no private entity does any sort of research or tracking of the movement of fruits. Farmers either don't care about that sort of stuff to do it on their own, or aren't technologically advanced enough to try and do it themselves.
"Pacific Fruit Express" and "The Great Yellow Fleet" are great books on the railroad technology development to provide produce West-to-East. The fast-trading of ripening fruits were redirected several times on their trip east via telegraph commands.
I recently learned about the Breadfruit[1] at the National Tropical Botanical Gardens on the island of Kaua'i.
Apparently, the Polynesians gave up the cultivation of rice (from their native Taiwan) and cultivated the breadfruit instead wherever it grew.
The NTBG is trialing the use of breadfruit to combat starvation in tropical nations[2]: hopefully, in the event of a Bananapocalypse, breadfruit could help alleviate the loss.
"scientists haven’t yet found a viable back-up banana to sub in for the Cavendish"
What? But what about the Goldfinger? I thought that was Race 4 resistant (Wikipedia seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_banana ), as well as tastier than the relatively bland Cavendish.
I don't know if they contain as much protein and whatnot, but I found peaches give me a similar "satiated" feeling if I eat them in the morning (in case you'll need an alternative fruit soon).
It's best to eat the bananas when they're still a little green; as they ripen their glycemic index increases. I think the Whole 30 list [0] of recommended fruit is pretty good.
There are dozens of foods that can substitute a banana in the Mediterranean at least.
Banana's do not have proteins. Generally speaking proteins can be found in meat. Banana has 0% cholesterol and big quantities of Potassium and Magnesium which help considerably with muscles (e.g. heart). That's their main benefit nutrition-wise.
Avogado, spinach and sweet potato (boiled/natural) has bigger amounts of Potassium.
[+] [-] hoggle|11 years ago|reply
A lot of old true-to-seed breeds of plants with diverse sets of attributes (like e.g. being more resistant to certain environmental conditions) haven't been cultivated for economic reasons and consequently have become extinct by now.
There are some enthusiasts trying to preserve those old breeds by running seed-banks but they have a hard time to do so even here in Europe because of corporations like Monsanto and their heavy lobbying trying to outlaw this movement.
Arche Noah:
"In the past 100 years we have lost about 75 percent of agricultural diversity worldwide."
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
Related - I was just posting on this topic on the Red Delicious thread which popped up on the HN frontpage:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8301185
Edit: I can't see why this gets downvoted, it is clearly on-topic and relevant.
[+] [-] maaaats|11 years ago|reply
Your down votes may be because of that, because your sentence looks a bit like the typical uneducated anti-gmo/monsanto hate.
[+] [-] atlantic|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] realusername|11 years ago|reply
If you create a GMO which is targeted to kill some insects or plants, there is then a huge incentive due to the large size of the crops and the lack of diversity for a new kind of insect / plant to resist to this GMO, it would have a massive competitive advantage and could spread much more quickly. There is only a benefit in the first years you are using it until the environment is adapting itself.
[+] [-] zorrb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] venus|11 years ago|reply
Probably more than 50% of the books I buy come from recommendations on HN, and I've been rarely disappointed.
[+] [-] megablast|11 years ago|reply
And all bananas are cloned from the same variety, one reason this virus is such a concern.
[+] [-] mcherm|11 years ago|reply
Did you read the article? One of the MAIN POINTS of this article was that this oft-repeated 'fact' is untrue. That, in fact, only a small portion of bananas are Cavendish grown for export, and that the non-cavendish (not cloned) bananas are also vulnerable to this fungus (not virus).
[+] [-] krallja|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oftenwrong|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/48150458/ns/technology_and_science...
Because of how domesticated bananas are reproduced, it's a good lesson on the problems with monoculture.
[+] [-] noonespecial|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcb0|11 years ago|reply
there are tons of types of banana. and none have this sweet, tutti frutty flavour the banana imported into the US has.
so, your wild banana is just one kind of a hundred.
south asia is the the same as south america, but with a whole lot of other kinds of bananas.... so there is plenty of variety other than cavendish and wild. most of the wild ones around brazil have almost invisible seeds. and are very easy to peel. and they go from huge (nanica... ironically means tiny) to very small ones (prata, ouro)
[+] [-] bsdshepherd|11 years ago|reply
In the U.S. it is increasingly difficult to grow one's own food due to legislation against small farms and seed libraries.
[+] [-] junto|11 years ago|reply
Across Latin America are panicking because their entire livelihoods are threatened by this.
FYI: Bananas are a parents goto fruit when your child is hungry and needs something healthy that is bulky and quick.
[+] [-] mogrim|11 years ago|reply
And portable with its own wrapper, doesn't stain, easy to wash out of clothes, and perhaps most importantly: it isn't green :)
[+] [-] sampo|11 years ago|reply
But maybe someone finds a way. Anyway, I want to remind how papaya cultivation in Hawaii was almost wiped out by a virus disease, but they did some genetic engineering in the 1990's, and after that everything has been fine.
http://hawaiitribune-herald.com/sections/news/local-news/pap...
Well, Europe still bans the import of GMO food. But at least everyone else gets to eat Hawaiian papaya.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sebastianavina|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acd|11 years ago|reply
Plus previous scandals Dole dumping poison on their workers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bananas!*
[+] [-] FooBarWidget|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hereonbusiness|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirgawain33|11 years ago|reply
The thumbnail summary: bananas only started being widely consumed in the 1960s because of heavy marketing efforts by Central American railroad builders (they had to do something with the land along the sides of the newly built railroads, and bananas happened to fit).
They are heavily chemically treated, more than any other fruit. They've been a monoculture almost since Day 1.
Oh, another fun fact, those little stickers on bananas? They were one of the first examples of 'branding'
I didn't find this article all that well written or informative. I recommend Chapman's Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World
I also happened to read John McPhee's Oranges at the same time. The contrast between the orange (an ancient fruit, widely consumed, hardy, with a rich literary tradition) and the banana is stark.
Both books, by the way, are great little studies in technology business. Techno-optimism, marketing, PR, globalization, manic CEOs; it's all there.
[+] [-] bduerst|11 years ago|reply
Bananas are heavily chemically treated with ethylene, an inert gas which causes plants to ripen faster and is harmless to humans.
(Fun fact: It's why bananas are never put next to other fruit in the supermarket, because they will cause other fruit to ripen and spoil faster.)
Bananas also haven't been a monoculture since day 1 either - but have been developed that way through centuries of selective breeding. The article outlines the monoculture problem quite well, but doesn't really mention that it's because the consumable plant [mostly] only reproduces asexually.
What's wrong with using tiny stickers on fruit for 'branding'?
[+] [-] niemeyer|11 years ago|reply
Here is some actual data from 2009, with analysis for Brazil by a proper agency (ANVISA's PARA, Project for Analysis of Agrotoxic Residue in Food):
http://portal.anvisa.gov.br/wps/wcm/connect/1424b98041ebbfb7...
It's in Portuguese, but you can find a nice color table in page 7 with fruit and vegetable names (rows) and states (columns) providing an idea (red == bad).
Bananas do better than pretty much anything else tested there.
[+] [-] dragonwriter|11 years ago|reply
Not even close. Craftsman's marks -- the original trademarks -- are pretty much the original form of branding, and predate banana stickers by by probably on the order of a couple thousand years.
[+] [-] NamTaf|11 years ago|reply
http://www.damninteresting.com/the-unfortunate-sex-life-of-t...
[+] [-] induscreep|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scythe|11 years ago|reply
It's very hard to genetically modify a plant that doesn't produce any seeds! Can bananas produce seeds? Yes, apparently:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_disease#The_response
It is an ongoing research project. The Gros Michel itself is not gone; there are a number of plants still living, but currently they are trying to deal with the strange banana chromosomes: bananas have three chromosomes -- an odd number!
[+] [-] noselasd|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|11 years ago|reply
The BBC has an excellent series, downloadable as podcasts. Here's the episode talking about Nikolai Vavilov.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p023wd2y
[+] [-] lbsnake7|11 years ago|reply
Side note, I've been interested in fruits, and the fruit trade so I've been trying to find out more information about how it all works. It is hard. Pretty much any hard data that comes out is from the USDA, no private entity does any sort of research or tracking of the movement of fruits. Farmers either don't care about that sort of stuff to do it on their own, or aren't technologically advanced enough to try and do it themselves.
[+] [-] nickhalfasleep|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_karana|11 years ago|reply
Apparently, the Polynesians gave up the cultivation of rice (from their native Taiwan) and cultivated the breadfruit instead wherever it grew.
The NTBG is trialing the use of breadfruit to combat starvation in tropical nations[2]: hopefully, in the event of a Bananapocalypse, breadfruit could help alleviate the loss.
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadfruit
2 http://ntbg.org/breadfruit/
[+] [-] mcv|11 years ago|reply
What? But what about the Goldfinger? I thought that was Race 4 resistant (Wikipedia seems to agree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_banana ), as well as tastier than the relatively bland Cavendish.
[+] [-] higherpurpose|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sciurus|11 years ago|reply
[0] http://whole30.com/downloads/whole30-shopping-list.pdf
[+] [-] enraged_camel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atmosx|11 years ago|reply
Banana's do not have proteins. Generally speaking proteins can be found in meat. Banana has 0% cholesterol and big quantities of Potassium and Magnesium which help considerably with muscles (e.g. heart). That's their main benefit nutrition-wise.
Avogado, spinach and sweet potato (boiled/natural) has bigger amounts of Potassium.
[+] [-] guard-of-terra|11 years ago|reply
Because as far as I know it also threatens a lot of diverse plant life, especially rare species and living fossils.
[+] [-] mcv|11 years ago|reply
Yeah, but can you eat those?
[+] [-] novalis78|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamandspoonfan|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]