Bananas are one of the most purchased items in American grocery stores, so an increase in price is going to affect the pocketbooks of most of us. Unfortunately, we're looking at just such an increase thanks to threats to growth, both short and long-term.
In the short term, heavy rains and cold temperatures have wiped some of Central America's banana crop, and companies such as Dole are raising their prices accordingly. The higher price of oil is also a factor, as shipping costs have increased. Expect bananaflation to keep the price of America's favorite fruit at $1 a pound or more through the summer.
The long-term prospects for the banana aren't rosy, either. All bananas you find in U.S. grocery stores are of the same variety, the Cavendish. A monoculture, all are grown from suckers taken from existing plants and so are genetically identical. Therefore, like all monocultures, they all are susceptible to the same diseases. And the banana world is threatened by a whopper.
If you are a boomer or older, it may seem to you that the bananas of your youth were more succulent. For once, this isn't a trick of memory, but a fact; until the 1950s a different variety of banana was king in the U.S., the Gros Michel. Unfortunately, this variety, planted in hundreds of millions of acres in Central America, fell prey to a disease, Tropical Race One. Over thirty years starting in the twenties, it wiped out much of the banana production.
The Cavandish, by all accounts a less flavorful alternative, had the benefit of being resistant to Race One, and has since become the variety most grown for export, making up 99% of the export market.
There are hundreds of other varieties of bananas grown in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, some with superior flavor and texture, but none of them travel well, another strength of the Cavandish.
Now, however, a new strain of the Race disease, the soil-born fungus Tropical Race Four, is making its way through the banana fields of the world, leaving devastation in its tracks. It has already wiped out much of Australia's production, and growers are holding their breath that it doesn't show up in Central and South American plantations. In a world where travel is so frequent, however, it's hard to imagine that it won't at some point migrate.
Australian scientists are attempted to use genetic modification to develop a strain resistant to Race 4, while those in Honduras are working on breeding a better banana through more conventional means, by cross-pollination. Neither has to date succeeded. Until they do, the monoculture of the banana means that the fruit is susceptible to widespread crop damage by Race Four and perhaps new diseases.
The days of cheap bananas, like cheap gasoline, may be behind us. Here's hoping those growing the most perfect fruit find a way to beat the blight.