Bananas

Bananas are grown in 135 countries and are a staple food rich in potassium, fiber, and carbs. Over 120 million metric tons of bananas are produced annually making it the most popular fruit in the world. India is the #1 producer, followed by China and Indonesia.

Did you know that, in the true botanical sense, strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not true berries. They’re actually aggregate fruits made from multiple ovaries. Bananas, on the other hand, are true berries as they check all these boxes

In botany, a berry is:

• A fruit that develops from a single ovary of a single flower
• Has a soft, fleshy pericarp (fruit wall)
• Contains seeds embedded in the flesh
• Doesn’t have a hard pit (like a peach)

How bananas became a staple food

If you aren't familiar with the dark history of bananas, let me introduce you to Minor C. Keith, who earned the moniker Banana King and was pivotal in shaping Central America for the next 150 years. 

From Railroads to Bananas

Born in 1848 in Brooklyn, New York, he followed in the footsteps of his uncle, who was building a railway in Costa Rica. In the 1870s, Keith helped build a railroad from San José to the port city of Limón in Costa Rica.

To fund the project (which was expensive and dangerous; thousands of local construction workers died), he planted bananas as a side hustle, along the rail line to feed workers and sell locally, but bananas soon became the main event.

In those days, all over Central America, labour was inexpensive, and the land was often granted or sold cheaply to foreign companies by local governments in exchange for building infrastructure (like railroads or docks).

As a savvy entrepreneur, Minor quickly realized that bananas did extremely well in Costa Rica’s climate, and he leveraged his railroad to export them back to the U.S, especially to New Orleans and New York, where they became wildly popular.

Spreading his tentacles

As business boomed, he eventually expanded operations into Colombia, Panama, and other parts of Central America. In 1899, Keith merged his banana empire with a competitor, creating the United Fruit Company (UFC), now known as Chiquita. 

Such was his power, especially in the early 20th century, that he successfully lobbied the U.S. government for military support to protect his investments in Central America, essentially wielding more power than the countries themselves.

In fact, in 1954, then Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz tried to nationalise unused land owned by United Fruit Company, which lobbied the U.S. government. The CIA painted Árbenz as a communist threat and backed a coup to overthrow him, all to protect the banana company interests of private US corporations. Sounds familiar, huh?

Banana Republic

The talented short-story writer O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) seeking refuge from the law in Honduras coined the term ‘Banana Republic’ in his short story “Cabbages and Kings”, wherein he described a fictional Central American country called Anchuria characterized by political instability, corrupt leaders and a weak economy dominated by banana exports. 

In such a milieu, the outsized influence of foreign corporations (inspired by real-life companies like United Fruit) dominated the politics and the economy, wherein the elite or ruling class were in cahoots with the multinationals in prioritizing foreign profit over national well-being.

Brilliant Marketing Campaign

There were major marketing campaigns by the United Fruit Company to popularize bananas in the United States, especially in the early 20th century, which were very strategic and successful. Bananas went from exotic and unknown to the everyday fruit we toss in lunchboxes and smoothies. This included

• Advertisements in newspapers and magazines by sophisticated New Englanders in fancy lace and gowns eating bananas to give them a snobbish appeal
• Recipe books with titles like ‘101 Ways to Serve a Banana’ and ‘Banana Recipes for the Modern Housewife’ piqued the interest of the public (banana cream pie, anyone?)
• Posters and billboards all over saturated the marketplace
• Partnerships with schools and nutritionists to promote bananas as a healthy food. Doctors even recommended them as digestible food for babies and the sick

As a result, by the 1930s–40s:

• Bananas were the most eaten fruit in the U.S.
• UFC was importing millions of bananas a week
• Americans thought of bananas as just... normal, even though they came from thousands of miles away

Creative educational jingle

In 1944, the UFC launched the iconic Chiquita Banana jingle featuring a singing banana cartoon to educate Americans on how to store bananas at room temperature instead of refrigerating them.

🎵 “I’m Chiquita Banana and I’ve come to say, Bananas have to ripen in a certain way...” 🎵- 

Banana monoculture - deja vu

Banana cultivation is a prime example of monoculture, wherein a single cultivar like Cavendish is cloned from one stock and intensively to leverage economies of scale, but it opens up the risk of a deadly disease that can wipe out the entire crop

Cavendish bananas (95% of the global produce) took over the global market in the mid-20th century after the previous top banana, the Gros Michel, was nearly wiped out by a fungal disease called Panama disease 

Cavendish is popular for the following reasons:

• It’s resistant to that original Panama disease strain.
• It’s easy to ship (tough skin, ripens off the plant).
• It has a long shelf life and a mild, sweet taste that appeals to global markets.

However, a new strain of the same fungus, dubbed the Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4) is currently devastating Cavendish plantations all over the world. 

TR4 has already spread across Asia, Africa, and Latin America (including Colombia, a major exporter). And now it’s Groundhog Day in the world of bananas … scientists are scrambling to develop a new disease-resistant strain, but it is a desperate race against time and nature.