Bananas are sweet and cheap and healthy — and in crisis, since the Panama disease could wipe out the commercial banana crop any day. In Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, Dan Koeppel wrote in depth about that fruity fear plus the crazy and complex socio-political history of bananas. Then earlier this month, Dan met me at Scoops to let me ask some more pressing banana questions over a vegan banana-oreo ice cream cone:
Do you eat a lot of bananas?
I do — I ate so many bananas for my book! But the bananas we have in the US are the worst bananas, really. They’re called the Cavendish, and it’s basically the McDonald’s hamburger of bananas. It’s bland, and it doesn’t taste good, compared to all the other bananas in the world.
It’s almost impossible to find other varieties of bananas in the U.S. In L.A., we’re actually pretty lucky. You can go to some of the ethnic groceries and often find a few other kinds.
Like where?
Seafood City, which is a Filipino grocery chain, has the best banana selection in L.A. They just opened one up in the Eagle Rock. And at Whole Foods, they have these red bananas. Those are pretty good — but they’re not cheap.
Bananas are traditionally the cheapest fruit in the supermarket because of this huge economy of scale, this volume, that pushes the prices down. We eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. It’s pretty amazing if you consider that bananas go bad in about 2 weeks and are shipped thousands and thousands of miles under refrigeration. And they’re really fragile. When you drop a banana, it gets brown instantly. Compare that to apples, which cost twice as much — and apples are grown in Riverside county! The reason for that is there’s just that one kind of [commercial] banana, and the banana industry has perfected the system — It’s just like McDonald’s. It’s the fast food of fruits.
Do you have any predictions about when Panama disease will hit?
It could be five minutes from now. It could be 30 years from now. but the more this disease spreads throughout the world, and the more global commerce happens and expands — two things that are happening now — the more likely it is that [banana disease] will come. And there’s nobody that denies that it’s coming. And the banana companies aren’t doing anything about it.
What can big banana companies do in preparation?
Nothing! [laughs] What they could do is …. very little. What they say they’re going to do is quarantine their farms. Nobody thinks this is going to work. The reason it doesn’t work is that this is a soil-borne disease. So the second a hurricane blows up a lot of dirt — which happens a lot in the banana-growing countries of central America — it doesn’t work.
What they need to do is they need to develop both banana diversity — which means learn to sell more than one type of banana — and they need to work on a genetically modified Cavendish that resists the disease, as well as work on other DNA-based solutions to stop the disease. None of these are guaranteed successes. But the companies really need to start now because they really haven’t been doing anything.
The whole banana supply chain is custom tailored to the infinite degree to the Cavendish and only Cavendish. Companies would have to make major changes to bring in any other kind of banana, and they’re afraid to do it.
From the consumer standpoint, what do you encourage people to do?
Just putting aside the issue of being a locavore for now — I think people need to inform their grocers and their friends that there’s more than one type of banana. I think we need to see the banana as something other than this plain McDonald’s banana and just start asking for [a variety]. At Whole Foods, at local food co-ops — Those are the easiest places to ask, but at regular supermarkets it’s possible too.
It is possible to have variety in fruit. It is harder with bananas because there’s a much higher technological hurdle, but Chiquita and Dole are fruit importers, so other parts of those companies know how to bring exotic fruit in. Dole imports kiwi fruits and mangosteins, for example. Those are not easy fruits to import.
But the Cavendish too has a function and it needs to stay. The banana is like the get up and go fruit. In our diet — where kids are like enormously fat and unhealthy, and they’re eating Doritos and candy bars — if you think about it, the banana is the only thing that competes against junk food. I definitely think it’s important that there be cheap bananas because of this niche they hold as the alternative to snack food.
Worldwide, more people rely on bananas as a hedge against starvation than anything else. It’s the fruit that, in American history, is the precursor to oil in that it toppled nations. Regime change happened because of bananas.
What about fair trade bananas?
Everyone should buy fair trade bananas — if they can find them. But at the premium people would be willing to pay — and again, I think people should be willing to pay that premium — but, practically in the market, the price is not high enough for the fair trade benefits to be high enough.
The real issue with fair trade is — How do you get more banana diversity? Because when you get into gourmet bananas — like offer different, delicious bananas for $2.99 a pound — I think people would pay. The problem is that the banana supply chain is so oriented towards the Cavendish it would require huge technological investments, which [fair trade companies] can’t afford — although they’re trying to figure out ways to do this.
Do you have a favorite banana dish?
I love the banana cream pie they serve at Fritto Misto in Santa Monica.
Have you had any nightmares about bananas?
The only two nightmares were real ones. My editor was fired right before the book was through. When I was in Africa, I was arrested and accused of being a spy and held by the army for a while.
Oh, in your dream?
No, for real! I’ve never dreamed bad dreams about bananas, though I’ve had a lot of anxiety about them….
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The red banana to the right’s one I was motivated to buy at Co-opportunity after this interview. Yum! For more bananamania, check out Dan’s answers to green LA girl readers’ questions about how best to store bananas to extend their life, if banana leaves could be used to make plates, whether it’s possible to grow banana trees in L.A. or in greenhouses, and who will “own” genetically-modified bananas along with other hairy GM-related questions.
And for all the banana news that’s fit to blog, subscribe to Dan’s Banana Blog.
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A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.
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How do they taste? Matt — composer, daily yerba mate drinker and 
