The Real Price Of Bananas.... (And Bananapocalypse Lurking?)

Did you know that the banana fruit only existed in a small part of Asia and Hawaii until it began to be imported into subtropical areas all around the globe?

The sobering fact is that the banana industry has exploited and fooled almost everybody: implementing slave wages, price fixing and genius marketing in the West (brainwashing), while being in bed with the WTO. The banana industry does not have any merits at all. It is (yet another) criminal cartel as explained in that video at the bottom page.

The production price for a box of banana in Latin America costs slightly below $5, the producer makes 70 cents profit per box... and must pay his employees. And now with the fungus threatening plantations there, they spray all kinds of pesticide on the fruits, more than ever before. Fearful producers will not take a chance to allow their plantation to be infected.

But this battle is kinda futile because they have not found yet any solution to eradicate this fungus called TR4, and which has already ravaged many plantations in Asia and Africa. Experts assert that it only is a matter of time. But this problem has happened before and decimated the industry. Today, some are convinced that it is a side effect of monoculture... makes perfectly sense to us.

In short, bananas have become highly toxic fruits. At 10mns in the Real Price Of Banana, they tell you straight out that they know how dangerous these chemicals are. Many workers get seriously sick in their mid 40's. A organic producer being interviewed says that he turned to permaculture to help his plantation resist pest better.

The whole industry should go down though, it has exploited laborers and customers for much too long. There is no such a thing as responsible capitalism as market players always seek to ever increase their profits. Earth Custodians regard TR4 as Natural Justice.

Unless you can afford organic, quit buying bananas today!

Short Documentary - The Real Price of Bananas

This illness, caused by the Fusarium fungus, was first spotted in Taiwan in 1967. In recent years, however, it has spread alarmingly. The fungus has swept through Asia and Africa, with devastating impacts on the Chinese banana industry, Staver says. Australia has particularly rigorous quarantine procedures, but the disease has appeared on several farms there as well. The fungus invades a plant by infecting its roots and then moving up through the xylem, the tissue that transports water and nutrients. With its xylem blocked up, the plant wilts and dies. Fusarium is sneaky, too—the spores can linger in the soil for decades, waiting to infect new banana plants. If unchecked, Tropical Race 4 could kill 80 percent of the bananas grown each year, researchers have predicted. *(2017)
https://www.popsci.com/worlds-bananas-under-attack-disease

Bananapocalypse: The race to save the world’s most popular fruit (2017)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/bananapocalypse-the-race-to-save-the-worlds-most-popular-fruit/2017/10/06/bf1635ac-7d28-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html?utm_term=.8f1b6d16d131

New Study Confirms That Bananas Are Going Extinct (2017)
A new study has confirmed that bananas, the world's favorite fruit, is in fact going extinct. The result, published in PLOS Pathogens, reveal that Tropical Race 4 (TR4) is a clone of Panama disease and that the quaratine efforts made to date have proven ineffective. https://www.delish.com/food-news/a43306/bananas-extinct-fungal-disease/

Tropical Race 4, a Single Pathogen Clone, Threatens Global Banana Production, Bananas: Their Origin and Global Rollout
The banana is the most popular fruit in the world and ranks among the top ten food commodities for Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America [1]. Notably, the crop is largely produced by small-holder farmers, with around 85% of the global production destined for local markets and only 15% entering international trade [1]. Bananas evolved in the Indo-Malayan archipelago thousands of years ago. The majority of all edible varieties developed from specific (inter- and intra-) hybridizations of two seeded diploid Musa species (M. acuminata and M. balbisiana) and subsequent selection of diploid and triploid seedless clones [2,3]. Despite rich genetic and phenotypic diversity [4], only a few clones developed, over time, into global commodities—either as dessert bananas, such as the triploid “Cavendish” clones, or as important staple foods such as cooking bananas and plantains [4,5]. Currently, bananas are widely grown in the (sub)tropics and are consumed in nearly all countries around the world, providing crucial nutrition for millions of people. Edible bananas reproduce asexually through rhizomes, but since the early 1970s, tissue culture has enabled mass production of cultivars [6]. This facilitates the rapid rollout of genetically identical plants, which have consumer-preferred traits and outstanding agronomical performance, onto vast acreages around the world. However, the typical vulnerability of monocultures to diseases has taken its toll on banana production over the last century. In 1876, a wilting disease of banana was reported in Australia [7], and in 1890, it was observed in the “Gros Michel” plantation crops of Costa Rica and Panama [8,9]. There it developed major epidemics in the 1900s that are among the worst in agricultural history [10], linking its most prone geographical area to its colloquial name: Panama disease. It was only in 1910 that the soil-borne fungus Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. cubense (Foc) was identified as the causal agent in Cuba, from which the name of the forma specialis was derived [10]. (2015) https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1005197