I love how the writer misstates Covid-19 as if it is a plague that is going to change life as we know it. The virus didn’t do that. The response by authorities did that.
Anyway, this is about bananas, not Covid-19.
killer disease turns up out of the blue. It moves by “stealth transmission”, spreading before symptoms even show. Once it takes hold, it is already too late to stop it – there is no cure. Life will never be the same again. Sound familiar?
Although this may sound remarkably like Covid-19, I am actually talking about Tropical Race 4 (TR4), a disease that affects bananas. Also known as Panama Disease, it is a fungus that has been rampaging through banana farms for the past 30 years. But within the last decade the epidemic has suddenly accelerated, spreading from Asia to Australia, the Middle East, Africa and more recently Latin America, where the majority of the bananas shipped to supermarkets in the global north come from. To date it is now in more than 20 countries, prompting fears of a “banana pandemic” and shortages of the world’s favourite fruit.
Scientists around the world are working against the clock to try to find a solution, including creating genetically modified (GM) bananas and a vaccine. But just like Covid-19, the question is not only if we can find a cure, but also how do we live with a “new normal” that will change bananas forever?
This is yet another plot by big banana to corner the market with gmo patent protected Gates variety bananas.
Oh, brother.
Yes, we have no bananas.
Yeah, GMO…otherwise known as “God move over,” because humans know better, right?
Given the devastation recently brought about by “genetic scientist” in a lab somewhere in China, let’s keep f**king around with our food supply by introducing animal or insect DNA into our vegetables.
What could possibly go wrong?
Doesn’t anyone get the moral of the Frankenstein story anymore?
Mankind should NEVER, NEVER, EVER attempt to play God!!! And that’s exactly what GMO amounts to!
Or as the 1970’s TV ad proclaimed…”It’s not nice to fool with Mother Nature!” Immediately followed by global death and destruction.
Will we never learn???
Time flies like the wind.
Fruit flies like bananas.
Bananas must be stopped from bunching.
Iceland can get rich. It has Europe’s largest banana plantation and uses geothermally heated greenhouses growing so many they export them. Since the greenhouses can be hermitically sealed against external infection, I imagine
they will building them expotentially to fill the demand.
https://icelandmag.is/article/does-iceland-really-have-europes-largest-banana-plantation
Where are we gonna get are slippers from now?…….
Slice up a banana every morning into my Grape Nuts; delicious!
So Stupid. Just order the bananas to wear masks, stay indoors and avoiding sunlight & fresh air. 😉
It’s a fake plague, total gaslight every step of the way, including, and especially, the fucking masks.
I planted a banana once but it didn’t grow.
I wonder if I should have peeled it first.
Kill it with murder hornets.
Bananas? We don’t need no stinkin’ bananas.
I eat a banana every morning and sometimes it is my only meal for the day. I guess I should go Bad Brad and start working out. Perhaps I would require more than a hundred calories per day…..
Maybe it’s because of all the cocaine they pack them with when they send it to the states. All the coked up fingers touching the trees. lol
Hey have you seen what bananas looked like originally before they were DNA’d to look prettier and ediblerer? I was a little scared. lol.
Turns out, the original banana went extinct but not before someone snagged a few and gussied them up.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hIiE9wGRkrA/maxresdefault.jpg
I like yellow tree dicks!
MJA – Because the banana has been so altered, it is highly suseptable to disease. A rep from Dole once told me that a single type of disease, if spread quick enough, would wipe out the modern day banana. I guess that day is here.
The disease killing bananas now is basically the same disease that killed off the Gros Michel (Big Mike) in the ’60’s, the variety that launched the original banana boom. The concern is that breeders have pretty much run out of genetic options for naturally breeding a resistant variety that tastes good.
The fungus that causes the disease, Fusarium oxysporum, has varieties that are devastating other plantation grown crops, like palm oil and black pepper, and is causing problems here with potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, etc. It is a plant pathogen worldwide, but mono-culture, especially of cloned plants, seems to provide it better opportunity to do economic damage. (Look up “Fusarium wilt” on Wikipedia.)
Up until now, the easiest remedy has been either breeding a resistant plant or abandoning the plantation and moving to virgin land. Neither option is as available now as they were a few decades ago. The short-term (and probable long-term) solution seems to be changing cultivation methods, which has proven unpopular among growers, as it requires significant up-front and moderate long-term increases in costs.
If people insist on good tasting bananas, they will have to pay more in the future — and/or accept eating GMO food.
Daylight come an’ me wanna go home.