Everything you ever wanted to know about baby bananas, and then some... |
Baby bananas, no more, no more... No more crying rhizomes, Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, no more... No more two-weeks time from plantation to store. Little Cavendish, green, you weren’t born on a tree, you came not from a seed, but you’re just like your brothers, all one hundred billion, born fresh each and every equatorial year. You’ve got identical genes from perennial mothers -- or dare I say, sisters, all outsourced from one who took over when dear, sweet Gros Michel caught the Panama fungus in the early 60’s and had to be laid to rest. My Cavendish friend, though you’re not quite as tasty as the late “Big Mike”, you still made Top Banana, the passionate product of a triploid mother and the men who got lucky waving powdery pollen over replicate rows on their battered three-speed bikes. But, even now, in your golden glory, as you hang on that rack with your peel-and-stick label that certifies you are the King of bananas, Black Sigatoka and the new Race 4 are bringing your legacy down... They say, "No more bananas in five to ten years, no more 'World’s Perfect Food' for our muffins and puddings, slices on cereal, splits topped with cherries, or chocolate-encapsulated 'nana sticks." Baby bananas, no more, no more... you and every last sibling, all one hundred billion, all facing extinction -- the victims of sterility, all too perfect, yet lacking the simple diversity to make a mistake, a mere mutation, one awful anomaly that just might save the rest... You cannot change, and for this, you will die. And in five to ten years, when your taste is a memory, after fruitless discussions and desperate debates, those last genetic altercations over bio-engineering and hybridization will finally give it a rest, as Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, and we are forced to decide what it is that we'll do when we're offered an FHIA-01. Cavendish, I miss you already. |