Features Will The Banana Split?: A Documentary by Bob Carty (RealAudio not available)

Transcript:

The Banana. It is, at times, the fruit that gets no respect. It is the butt of jokes and pranks and pratfalls. But it is also the most successful fruit in the world. The banana is sustenance for half a billion of the world’s people. It is the fourth most important food crop. It has been the cause of rebellions. It has provoked coup d’etats. And after all that, it’s still good on top of your cereal.

But the banana, as we know it, is in trouble. Some are even whispering the E word – extinction. That the bananas we eat could disappear in five to ten years time. How could it have come to this?

We at the Sunday Edition decided to put one of our crack investigative producers on this story. His assignment: to pull back the peel of the banana’s story - past and present - to help us understand the magnitude of the threat, and the search for solutions. Here’s Banana Bob Carty with his documentary … Will the Banana Split?

SONG “All the nations love bananas” (Canto America)

SFX – Grocery store – carts – PA announcement for bananas

SCRIPT: This is the banana battlefield. It may look like just a grocery store. But here the banana fought for decades to establish its dominant presence in the world of fruit. Today, it is fighting for its survival.
Yes, this is a battlefront – just around the corner from the red apples, across the isle from the decks of green lettuce. Here, always on the prestigious end display shelf, is the swath of brilliant yellow. This is where cravings and dreams and desires are fulfilled for banana lovers.

CLIP: Banana lovers …

SCRIPT: But all is not as mellow as it seems for the perfect fruit. A hidden threat now stalks the perfect fruit - a new disease killing the banana plants of Asia. Soon, this contagion will come to Americas - where all of our bananas are grown. And when it arrives, the new pestilence will strike down the banana we all have come to love. In our heart of hearts, banana lovers know what this means.

CLIP: No fresh bananas, no banana bread, or muffins, no banana pies … How very tragic … That’d be too bad – yup.

SCRIPT: OK – so the possible demise of the banana, as we know it, is not yet causing riots in the produce isles. But this IS a serious issue. The extinction of the export banana would affect the health and happiness of consumers, the livelihood of workers, the viability of national economies, yeah … the very fluidity of international commerce. Just ask any banana expert. The banana is important.

CLIP: (Randy Ploetz) It really is.

SCRIPT: There you have. Right from an expert. Someone known to his friends as “Banana man”. A guy with direct, personal, and daily experience with bananas.

CLIP: (laugh) I had a banana on my cereal this morning.

SCRIPT: And a man who probably also deserves a more formal introduction.

CLIP: I’d appreciate that.

SCRIPT: Meet Randy Ploetz, a professor of plant pathology at the University of Miami who is going to help us with our walk through banana history. Randy – the banana … an important fruit?

SCRIPT: Now what’s also interesting is that the banana, which we usually associate with South America, isn’t even from this side of the world. The banana is Asian. So how did it get here? To help us with that let me introduce a woman who wrote a book on the subject …

CLIP: (VSJ) “Bananas – An American History.”

SCRIPT: Please meet Virginia Scott Jenkins. So, Virginia, how did bananas get to the western hemisphere?

CLIP: (VSJ) Bananas originated in SE Asia, in India and other pats. They were brought to Africa by Muslim traders. Then brought to the New World by Spaniards – who brought them to Haiti, Cuba and the Central American mainland in order to feed their slaves.

SFX – Market in Honduras

SCRIPT: And this is where the banana ended up - here on the Central American mainland – a market in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras to be precise. Two things strike you here. One is that there’s not just one kind of banana on sale – they come in a variety of shapes and sizes.

CLIP: (Bob talks to vendors in market about four different bananas .. ends with girl who says she eats five date bananas at a time)

SCRIPT: And that’s the other thing you notice here. People eat a lot of bananas. Some shoppers are carrying off half a stalk – 60 or 70 ripe bananas. North Americans eat about 14 kilos of bananas a year … people here and in Africa eat hundreds of kilos. In fact, 90% of the world’s bananas are NOT grown for export – they’re eaten locally.
But back to the banana’s history. Bananas were first brought to the Caribbean and Central America around 1516. And they just stayed there for more that 3 ½ centuries. No one thought about sending them to North America or Europe by sailing ship – because they’d be mush by the time they got there. But that changed in the 1880s.

CLIP: (VSJ) That’s right. In the 1880s, when you had refrigeration and steam ships then it was possible to transport bananas from the Caribbean to North American ports. So, US fruit companies went into Central America, purchased millions of acres of land and cut down the rainforest and planted thousands of acres of bananas.

SCRIPT: Now growing bananas was not as simples as it sounds. Firms like the United Fruit Company had to figure how to produce tons and tons of fruit that are uniform in quality and appearance and ripeness ... and then transport it, with military timing, thousands of kilometres to market. And then, they had to get consumers to buy bananas. Remember that in the1880s most Europeans and North Americans didn’t even know what a banana looked like. And then there was a little cultural problem … the suggestive shape of the banana.

CLIP: (VSJ) Well, the shape of the banana is a little difficult for some people, particularly in the Victorian era. Bananas were not considered very gentile. One of the interesting things I found was early instructions for how to eat a banana – etiquette books on what to do when you find a banana in front of you at a dinner party.

SCRIPT: Indeed – what to do? Well, readers of the 1888 edition of THE CORRECT THING IN GOOD SOCIETY learned that the LAST thing you did was pick up the banana, pull back the skin and bite off a piece – especially if you were a woman. No, the proper way to face the fruit, if you had to at all, was with a silver fruit knife and fork.
The banana companies were able to overcome these cultural impediments. They did it with brilliant banana marketing … extolling the virtues of the fruit, and pricing it right.

CLIP: (VSJ) They sold them as the cheapest fruit on the market – and that was a deliberate decision by the fruit companies to undersell local fruit. They are still the cheapest fruit in the grocery store. And the marketing of bananas is absolutely amazing. The United Fruit Company marketed bananas with many health claims – for people trying to gain weight, people trying to lose weight – people with tuberculosis, female complaints, asthma … all kinds of things. Actually United Fruits was trying to get people to eat them at every meal. United Fruit Company and others put out cookbooks trying to convince housewives they could use them for all kinds of things.
COOKBOOKS – GIVE US YOUR FAVORITE RECIPE
Ok. Peel the banana. Put some mustard on it. (MUSTARD) Yes. Wrap a slice of ham around it. Put a couple of toothpicks to keep the ham around it. Line the bananas wrapped in ham in a baking dish and then pour white sauce, cream sauce over the whole thing and then bake it. (YOU’RE KIDDING - A REAL RECIPE?) Yes it is. It’s the only thing I ever cooked for my husband he wouldn’t eat. DO YOU BLAME HIM? No I don’t.

SCRIPT: Well, the banana cookbooks and advertising campaigns began to work. And once people got a taste ... well, what’s not to like in this perfect little package. The banana comes in it’s own sanitary wrapper, a wrapper that is an external indicator of the degree of ripeness within, a wrapper with a tab for its removal of the wrapper which also happens to be perforated for easy peeling. And it’s shaped for the mouth and tastes good.

SONG: “I LIKE BANANAS”

SCRIPT: Banana consumption took off in the first decades of the 1900s. In fact, the 1911 edition of the Boy Scout Handbook listed, among the good deeds a scout might perform, such things as chopping wood for mom’s stove, helping a lady cross the street, and picking banana peels up off the sidewalk. Bananas it seems were everywhere. And not surprisingly, they began to show up in popular culture. There were the cartoon images of peoples slipping on banana peels – which made a easy flip into the movies.

SFX – SLIP AND FALL

SCRIPT: There were of course some classic quips … like the one from Groucho Marx … “time flies like an arrow: fruit flies like a banana.” But above all there were the banana songs. Some of them … uh, rather sexual

SONG: “LET ME PUT MY BANANA IN YOUR FRUIT BASKET”

… and some of them just kind of silly.

SONG: “MY WIFE RAN OFF WITH A BANANA”

SFX - JUNGLE

SCRIPT: Meanwhile, bananas were also making a big impact back in Central America. The sounds of the rainforest were replaced by … SFX – BANANAS ON CABLES … the sound of banana stems being trundled from field to packing plant on overhead networks of cables. That’s how some of the most diverse ecologies on earth disappeared.
The banana companies DID bring jobs and economic growth, but also a number of political problems. There was the predictable corruption that takes root when a foreign company buys up a big chunk of your nation. Then there were the company towns, the union-busting, the refusal by banana companies to pay taxes. All of which locally aroused a certain amount of local anger and protest … which in turn was met with American gunboat diplomacy.

SONG – “BANANA REPUBLIC”

SCRIPT: Yes, long before the chain of clothing stores, the original banana republics were, well, republics. In the early decades of the 20th century, US Marines occupied Honduras five times, Panama four times, Nicaragua twice, to day nothing of other kinds of interventions in El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, and Guatemala. And year after year banana production kept rising.
That meant that the banana companies had to keep consumption growing back in North America. They struck upon a marketing bonanza inspired by a Brazilian actress.

SONG: “I-YI-YI-YI LOVE YOU VERY MUCH”

CLIP: (VSJ) Carmen Miranda was a movie star in the 30s – and very flamboyant – and she wore these wonderful hats with fruit and flowers. And Carmen Miranda was the model for Chiquita Banana.

SONG: CHIQUITA BANANA

SCRIPT: Ah, Chiquita banana … a cartoon character who rose to the top of the music charts in the early 50s – and then was voted by American soldiers as the girl they would most like to share a foxhole with.
However, just a little consumer side-bar here. Chiquita Banana’s line about bananas being grown near the equator – so don’t put them in the refrigerator – it’s a fabulous rhyme. But it’s not true.

CLIP: (VSJ) Of course you can put bananas in the refrigerator. They are refrigerated on the way to the super market. The fruit companies didn’t want you to do that – they wanted you to eat and buy more bananas. What happens when you put it in the refrigerator – after a certain point the skin turns black. But the inside of the fruit is perfectly good. So if your banana is getting a little too ripe, a little past the point that you like it, put it in the refrigerator and that slows down the ripening.

SONG – “I’M GOING BANANAS”

SCRIPT: To this day I remember my first experience of the banana as icon … in the 50s my dad was taking a Dale Carnegie public speaking course. And as an exercise he had to recite a poem in the most flamboyant fashion possible. I remember it all ... me and my brothers and sisters would be in the living room ,.. my father would turn off the lights, then enter the darkened room wearing a cape:
“The night was dark, and devilish too
And down the street a hobo flew
And from his belt a knife he drew
And split a banana right in two.”

SONG – “COUNTING SONG”

SCRIPT: The banana it seemed was on top of the world ... a mass-marketing success, a billion-dollar business.
But back in the banana republics, all was not well. Diseases kept killing banana plants. Now, you remember Randy Ploetz - the banana man from the University of Miami – Randy says the problem was the kind of banana they were growing.

CLIP: (RP) “Big Mike” - Gros Michel. A really excellent banana, produced large bunches, big fingers. You could chop it and throw it into a rail care – no special handling. Really good banana. SONG: DAY-OH … Oh,, how could I forget that - in that song he’s talking about the Michel Gros, it’s the banana that made the Jamaican trade. (SONG UP) Big Mike has all these great attributes but its Achilles heal is that it’s very susceptive to race one Panama disease – it’s caused by a soil fungus. It kills the plant outright.

SCRIPT: And not only that, Panama disease couldn’t be controlled with fungicides. The only way the banana companies could keep ahead of Panama disease was by moving their plantations, cutting down virgin rainforest to use soil that wasn’t diseased. But by the 1950s, they were running out of new rainforest to cut down. The “Big Mike” export banana was being wiped out.

SFX – SONG: YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS

SCRIPT: So with the Big Mike banana being wiped out by the early 50s it looked like yes, we’d have no bananas. But then we got lucky. And for this part of the story, meet another banana aficionado,

CLIP: (AM) To me, if the world didn’t have bananas it would be a very boring place (laugh).

SCRIPT: This is Adolfo Martinez, the director-general of the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research. Adolfo explains that just as the Big Mike was withering away on the vine, they discovered the Cavendish banana … so-called because, although it originally came from Vietnam it was also cultivated by the Duke of Devonshire, who family name was Cavendish. The Cavendish banana tasted almost as good as its predecessor AND it was resistant to Panama disease. However, as Adolfo Martinez points out, it did have its shortcomings.

CLIP: (AM) Cavendish is more delicate banana – it has to be bagged to protect from insects and birds, then it has to be handed and put in bags and boxes and refrigerated and then sent to States.

SCRIPT: That’s why bananas arrive to us today in boxes and plastic – and not just on stems. The Cavendish also turned out to be very susceptible to another kind of banana disease called black sigatoka. And there’s only one way to fight that.

CLIP: (AM) You have to use pesticides, fungicides with Cavendish – up to 50 times a year – that’s about weekly. WHAT DOES THAT COST? – about 500 to 800 dollars a year per hectare.

SCRIPT: That means that a quarter of the price we pay for a bunch of bananas goes to drenching them in pesticides. By the way, food inspectors say they don’t usually detect any pesticide residues on the flesh inside the banana. The real impact of pesticide use is on the health of banana workers and the environment.
And then along came another problem. A new disease. It appeared just a couple of years ago. It’s a mutant of the old Panama disease - called tropical race four Panama disease. It started in Asia.

CLIP: (AM) It seems to be that it is present now in Indonesia, Taiwan, Pakistan and Canary Island – not found in Latin America yet. But if that disease gets here to plantations of exporting companies, it will be a disaster. There is no chemical control for it. It will wipe out, completely, the Cavendish production we have today.

SONG – “YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS”

SCRIPT: What can be done about this looming disaster? Well, we could try to prevent the new Panama disease from getting out of Asia. But with global trade and travel no one thinks that’ll work. The disease WILL eventually get to this hemisphere.
Banana companies could also try to develop a fungicide that works on this disease. Experts say that would be costly and would meant the use of a lot of fungicide … which wouldn’t make consumers or banana workers or the environment very happy.
Then there’s the possibility of creating a new banana. One way of doing that is by breeding – the traditional way farmers improve their crops. Mating one kind of banana with another kind to get disease resistance plus good taste. The problem here has to do with sex ... or more precisely, the lack of it.

CLIP: (AM) Bananas can produce fruit without pollination. A female flower can produce fruit without pollen. In bananas the plant produces male and female flowers at different times. That’s one of the reasons you don’t find hardly any seeds in banana plants. The other reason is that bananas are sterile per se. THEY’RE STERILE? Yes, sterile. THEY’VE GOT IT ALL MIXED UP. Yeah they do – bananas don’t have a lot of sex.

SCRIPT: Yes, for all its phallic appearance, the commercial banana is sexually decrepit. Commercial bananas are propagated not by sexual reproduction but by taking shoots from the mother plant. And that lack of sex means that on plantations all the bananas are genetically identical. There’s no diversity. One gets a disease, they all get sick. So, how to get some genetic diversity into commercial bananas?

SONG: MELLOW YELLOW

SCRIPT: Now the biotech industry has seized on this as a great idea. Not only would genetic engineering save the Cavendish banana, it would reduce pesticide use. And since the Cavendish is sterile, there wouldn’t be any worries about genetic drift or pollution. It could be the salvation of the commercial banana. It would also be good PR for the biotech industry ... a way to overcome consumer resistance to genetic engineering. Randy Ploetz isn’t so sure it will work.

CLIP: (RP) I’m not aware of any resistant banana that has been produced anywhere in the world that has been produced by genetic engineering. And then the other question is what happens when you get that banana. I know people in Europe are really strongly opposed to that product. So you would lose a major market if you had that type of banana.

SCRIPT: Adolfo has 368 varieties of bananas here (out of about 1000 species that are known around the world by the way). For four decades Adolfo’s institute has been trying to get different varieties to mate with each other – share some genes in a natural way. And Adolfo gives them a helping hand. Literally. His workers put ladders up into banana plants and scrape the pollen off the males flowers of some varieties … then, walk over to a field with a different variety of banana, and, by hand, pollinate the female flowers. A few months later they harvest the fruit … which makes quite a mountain of bananas.

SONG – “30,000 POUNDS OF BANANAS”

SCRIPT: Well, more or less. Then they peel and squish the bananas and go through the mush to look for seeds. And they find a few – not many – maybe three in every 100 bananas. But those are the seeds of brand new banana varieties. And Adolfo is as proud as a new daddy.

CLIP: This is the best. It has a huge bunch. It can weigh up to 80 kilos. It is a plant that is practically immune to sigatoka, immune to disease, is semi-dwarf and is resistant. They have slightly different flavour than the Cavendish and that is why the company has not accepted it yet. Even if Panama disease comes here we have some alternatives right now. This has been a very, very long road – it has been 40 years of work and now you can see results.

SFX - SUPERMARKET

SCRIPT: But how to change that situation on the banana battlefield, the grocery store produce department. Banana companies have spent so much time and money on promoting just one kind of banana – they’re loathe to tackle the Herculean task of changing public consciousness about what a banana looks and tastes like.
But are consumers so set in their ways. Would shoppers eat a banana that might look a little different, taste a bit different, perhaps even taste a little better?

CLIP: (shoppers) By all means, I’d try a variety of bananas. I would, I’ve seen different ones. Sure, if it was sweet and I could use it for smoothies. Sure.

SCRIPT: There you have it. A possible solution to the demise of the export banana. A simple idea, articulated by Adolfo Martinez.

CLIP: You should have more choice in your bananas.

SCRIPT: And endorsed by Virginia Scott Jenkins.

CLIP: It’s true.

SCRIPT: And heartily embraced by Randy Ploetz.

CLIP: More banana choice.

SCRIPT: Hey, Randy, that’s not a bad slogan – MORE BANANA CHOICE. Simple. Clear. I can hear it … yeah … it could be a consumers’ uprising. A welling up of the popular will. A mass movement for the age of the new banana.

CLIP: Chanting “more banana choice”

SCRIPT: More banana choice … For the Sunday Edition, I’m Bob Carty.

SONG – “ALL THE NATIONS LIKE BANANAS”

Links

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The Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Research

The Institute for the Improvement of the Banana and Plantain, Montpellier, France (INIBAP)

Article by Professor Randy Ploetz

Chiquita Banana