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Lentis/The Cavendish Banana, Monoculture, and Blight

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History and Background

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The Cavendish Banana

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Bananas originate from Southeast Asia, where wild bananas were bred into various strains with increased fruit yield and varying tastes. Cavendish bananas were first cultivated in the mid 1800s and include varieties like the "Dwarf Cavendish" and the "Grand Nain".[1] However, the Gros Michel banana was the primary choice of major banana companies because of their favorable shipping qualities.[2] Both the Gros Michel and Cavendish bananas must be reproduced through cloning, which limits genetic diversity among banana plants across the world.[3]

When Panama disease ravaged the world's Gros Michel plants in the 1950s, the Cavendish was identified as a cultivar that was resistant to Panama disease and could be grown in similar conditions as the Gros Michel. However, a new strain of Panama disease was discovered in the 1990s, rendering the Cavendish susceptible to the same disease that destroyed the economic viability of its predecessor.[3]

Monoculture

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In agriculture, monoculture is the cultivation of a single crop in a given area.[4] Practicing monoculture on the same land every year is known as monocropping or continuous monoculture. Professor Frank Uekötter at the University of Birmingham states the practice has its origins in 17th century Caribbean sugar plantations, replacing traditional subsistence farming methods to maximize profits. It exploded in popularity following World War II, as major technological advancements allowed producers to feed an ever-increasing world population.[5] Today, monoculture is widely used by the global farming industry, but environmental, social, and economic concerns continue to surround the practice.

Blight

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Blight refers to a type of plant disease that causes cell death and necrosis in plant tissues.[6] Most blights are caused by bacterial or fungal pathogens. There are several examples of blight throughout history, like the following:

  • Panama disease, caused by the fungi Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense, led to the extinction of the Gros Michel banana. The tropical race 4 (TR4) strain currently threatens the Cavendish banana.[3]
  • Late blight of potato, caused by the water mold Phytophthora infestans, led to the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s.[7]
  • Chestnut blight, caused by the fungi Cryphonectria parasitica, has almost completely eradicated mature American Chestnuts in their natural range.[8]

Factors Influencing Monoculture and Blight

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Economic

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99% of the world's exported bananas are Cavendish bananas. They stay green for several weeks after harvest, they're attractive in markets, and have higher yield rates compared to the Gros Michel.[9] Additionally, planting the Cavendish in monocultures made them easy to farm and cultivate, leading farmers to plant vast plantations of all Cavendish bananas. These farmers, located mostly in Latin America and Southeast Asia,[10] are financially dependent on the Cavendish's survival. As the TR4 variant of the Panama Disease has spread around the world, it's banana-dependent countries with smaller, less diverse economies have suffered combined losses of US$18.2 billion to date.[11]

Environmental

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Although efficient from a marketing standpoint, monoculture is a fragile practice that relies on the land's ability to sustain continued cultivation. Genetic diversity ensures the survival of species despite natural threats; the lack thereof in Cavendish bananas means the farms are highly susceptible to pests and diseases, forcing farmers to overuse insecticides and pesticides. These devastate the environment by polluting water and destroying aquatic life, leading to soil and water contamination.[12]

Banana plants uptake nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium from fertilizer.[13] Repeated monoculture prohibits these nutrients from replenishing in the soil, making it more difficult or potentially impossible to grow the same plant in the same location. Soil erosion, deforestation, and destruction of habitats can put a permanent end to banana growth, crippling export-dependent economies globally. To alleviate the strain put on the land, farmers practice techniques like fixed rotation, multiple cropping, and intercropping.[14]

Technological

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The implementation of monoculture and monocropping allowed for the rise of mechanized agriculture at the start of the 20th century. By practicing monoculture, uniform growing conditions were created for swaths of agricultural land, creating ideal conditions for heavy machinery.[4] In the United States, this resulted in the consolidation of agricultural land into fewer, larger farms, as the number of American farms decreased from 6.5 million in 1920 to 2 million in 2020.[15]

Participants

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Engineers

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Genetic engineering has been the main defense from the banana's vulnerabilities. The Honduras Foundation for Agricultural Research (FHIA) is working to develop a disease-resistant model of the Cavendish. Recently, a UK-based biotech company, Tropic Biosciences, received US$10 million to research gene-editing technology that can solve issues like disease resistance in bananas.[9]

Policy Makers

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Government legislature largely dictates regulations, subsidies, and other rules that farmers must follow in their respective locales. In the US, the 2018 Farm Bill implemented a series of 12 titles determining how, what kind, and to what extent food can be grown.[16] Crops like corn, soy, wheat, and rice receive high subsidies, and are therefore mass produced across the country.[17] With backing from the government, these crops are subjected to monoculture as they become more and more valuable to cultivate. In banana export dependent countries, laws are geared towards utilizing agricultural practices that maximize profit from banana sales.

Farmers, Producers, and Export-Dependent Countries

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The top 5 banana-exporting countries are Ecuador, Philippines, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Colombia, which in total account for nearly 86% of all banana export worldwide. In Central American farms, bananas are grown on monoculture plantations that can each cover hundreds of hectares. Chemical inputs are used to increase crop yield. The price of this large-scale production is poor labor conditions, insufficient wages, and damaging environmental impacts. As of 2013, about 50% of market shares in global banana exports were shared by multinational companies Chiquita, Fresh del Monte, Dole, Fyffes, and Noboa.[18] Almost all grocery vendors that sell fresh produce stock Cavendish bananas year-round. An emergence of blight threatens the entire retail chain from farmers to local distributors.[19]

Consumers

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Out of 148 countries tested, Papua New Guinea consumes the most bananas per capita, with India being the largest banana consumer overall. Bananas have a diverse culinary significance worldwide. Every part of the banana plant is even known to contain a unique health benefit. The peel and pulp possess antifungal and antibiotic properties while the flowers are known to provide relief to a spectrum of external ailments. The banana is most commonly known as a significant source of potassium, which is essential for muscle health.[20]

Conclusion

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Parallels

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Monoculture, with its accompanied risks and benefits, can be generalized to represent similar issues in society.

Current land development and zoning laws in the United States contrast with the land use and zoning in European countries.[21] For example, nearly all of Paris is designated as the "General Urban", a mixed-use zoning code, while 75% of Los Angeles is zoned for detached single-family homes.[22] Single-use zoning allows land to be only used for one purpose, such as residential or commercial, while mixed-use zoning allows land to be used for multiple purposes at once. These development restrictions of single-use zoning often increases travel time for citizens, leading to increased pollution and traffic congestion in cities with large swaths of single-use zoning. These drawbacks are lessened with mixed-use zoning, as people live closer to areas of business, recreation, and entertainment, thereby decreasing travel time.[21]

Computer software also suffers from monoculture. Default configuration settings make it easier for non-experts to use certain software, but this leads to countless computers with identical settings, and a vulnerability discovered in those settings leads all of those computers being susceptible.[9] An example of this is 'Heartbleed,' a security bug in the OpenSSL cryptography library, which allows the theft of information from internet results normally protected by SSL/TLS encryptions.[23]

Animal and plant genetic diversity, specifically the lack thereof caused by inbreeding, long term isolation, etc. is another parallel to monocultures.

Benefits of Rejecting Monoculture

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Monoculture may allow for greater harvest efficiency, greater crop yields, and simpler, cheaper plantation management, but the risks involved with monoculture outweigh the benefits.

For example, pests favoring a certain crop can find an abundance of densely planted, identical crops on monoculture plantations. Since monoculture and blight often coexist, this encourages the overuse of fertilizers and pesticides which, along with nutrient depletion, degrades soil. Monoculture also decreases biodiversity, negatively affecting local wildlife since ecosystems generally develop with biodiversity. Finally, monoculture negatively affects the global climate due to its dependency on fossil fuels to fuel harvest and processing systems and the homogeneity of monoculture plantations weakening an area's climate resilience.[4]

Economically, monocultures leave farmers financially tied to the health of a single crop, which presents risk due to ever-present blight. As monocultures degrade their surrounding environments, farmers reliant on that environment suffer. When the farmers suffer, the entire chain, including the consumer and the public, suffer.

Ultimately, doing away with monocultures in all aspects of society will increase economic resilience and the natural and technological worlds' fortitude amidst a time when that fortitude is being tested more every day.

References

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  1. ↑ Morton, J. F. (1987). Banana. Fruits of Warm Climates, 29–46. https://hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/morton/banana.html.
  2. ↑ Berenstein, N. (2016, May 19). The History of Banana Flavoring. Lucky Peach. Archived from original at https://web.archive.org/web/20170627233708/http://luckypeach.com/the-history-of-banana-flavoring/.
  3. ↑ a b c Ploetz, R. C. (2005). Panama disease: An old nemesis rears its ugly head: Part 1. the beginnings of the Banana Export Trades. Plant Health Progress, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1094/php-2005-1221-01-rv.
  4. ↑ a b c Slavikova, S. P., says:, 023239, & says:, J. E. (2020, December 5). Pros and cons of monoculture farming. Greentumble. https://greentumble.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-monoculture-farming/#pest.
  5. ↑ Uekötter, F. (n.d.). A global history of monoculture. University of Birmingham Research. Retrieved from https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/quest/preserving-and-creating-culture/a-global-history-of-monoculture.aspx.
  6. ↑ Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2017, June 22). blight. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/blight.
  7. ↑ Ristanio, J., Schumann, G. L., & D'Arcy, C. J. (2018). Late blight of potato and tomato. APS. Retrieved from https://www.apsnet.org/edcenter/disandpath/oomycete/pdlessons/Pages/LateBlight.aspx.
  8. ↑ Worrall, J. J. (n.d.). Chestnut Blight. Forest Pathology. Retrieved from https://forestpathology.org/canker/chestnut-blight/.
  9. ↑ a b c Kambhampaty, A. P. (2019, November 18). What we can learn from the near-extinction of bananas. Time. https://time.com/5730790/banana-panama-disease/.
  10. ↑ Chapter 1 overview of World Banana Production and Trade. The World Banana Economy, 1985-2002. (n.d.). https://www.fao.org/3/y5102e/y5102e04.htm.
  11. ↑ Scientists race to save bananas from Panama disease. International Service for the Aquisition of Acri-biotech Applications. (n.d.). https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=17423.
  12. ↑ The Problem With Banans | Environmental & Social Issues in the Trade. (n.d.). Banana Link. https://www.bananalink.org.uk/the-problem-with-bananas/.
  13. ↑ What Are Banana Fertilizer Requirements: Tips On Feeding Banana Plants. (n.d.). Gardening Know How. https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/banana/feeding-banana-plants.htm.
  14. ↑ Power, J. F., & Follett, R. F. (1987). Monoculture. Scientific American, 256(3), 78–87. JSTOR.
  15. ↑ Berkman, S. (2020, September 3). How farming has changed in every state the last 100 years. Stacker. https://stacker.com/stories/3989/how-farming-has-changed-every-state-last-100-years.
  16. ↑ What is the Farm Bill? (n.d.). National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. https://sustainableagriculture.net/our-work/campaigns/fbcampaign/what-is-the-farm-bill/.
  17. ↑ PRIMER: Agriculture Subsidies and Their Influence on the Composition of U.S. Food Supply and Consumption. (2021). AAF. https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/primer-agriculture-subsidies-and-their-influence-on-the-composition-of-u-s-food-supply-and-consumption/.
  18. ↑ All About Bananas | Producers, Where They’re Grown & Why They Matter. (n.d.). Banana Link. https://www.bananalink.org.uk/all-about-bananas/.
  19. ↑ Bananas | FAO | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. (2021). https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities/bananas/en/.
  20. ↑ Kumar, K. P. S. (2012). Traditional and Medicinal Uses of Banana. 1(3), 13.
  21. ↑ a b Hirt, S. (2012). Mixed Use by Default: How the Europeans (Don’t) Zone. Journal of Planning Literature, 27(4), 375–393. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412212451029. Web of Science.
  22. ↑ Badger, E., & Bui, Q. (2019, June 18). Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html.
  23. ↑ Synopsys, I. http://www.synopsys.com/. (n.d.). The heartbleed bug. Heartbleed Bug. https://heartbleed.com/.
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