Bananas are big business. Reports from the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) show production reached 116 million tonnes between 2017 and 2019, and 2017 figures show the export industry generating $12bn a year. Projections suggest the banana trade will be one of the fastest-growing industries into the next decade. They are in the UK’s top three most popular fruits by sales.
Bananas are widely cultivated today. The industry, first established in Central America in the early 20th century, was historically dominated by a few US firms. The first generation of firms were notorious for establishing the ‘banana republics’: utilising corruption and coups to cement their dominance and ensure generous land and tax concessions.
In 1911, the founder of Cuyamel Fruit Company, Sam Zemurray, organised a coup against the Honduran government, installing US-puppet Manuel Bonilla as president. Besides the land and tax breaks awarded to them, the instability generated by the coup combined with Honduras’s unpayable national debt allowed Cuyamel to undermine the government, establish a monopoly on goods and employment, and build up the country’s infrastructure to suit their needs. The first-generation firms are all still around today under different names: the United Fruit Company, having acquired Cuyamel, became Chiquita while Standard Fruit Company now operates under Dole.
Today just five companies operate 80% of the international banana trade and production has spread over the world. Banana exports are an important part of the economies of a number of poorer countries around the world. While many varieties are grown around the world, the Gros Michel was chosen as the exclusive banana for the Western market both for its flavour and the thickness of its skin, making it durable and easier to transport.
But the banana industry is facing a crisis; one we have seen before. During the 1950s and 60s, Race 1 strains of the fungus fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ubense (FOC) wiped out most Gros Michel plantations in Central America. FOC is the soil-living fungus responsible for Panama disease. It is resistant to fungicide and kills plants within a few months or years. Plants can be asymptomatic for a long time before they begin to die. As the host plant dies, spores produced by the fungus are released in which the pathogen survives and spreads. These spores can survive in soil for up to 30 years and infect plants via their roots as they grow in infected soil.
The remarkable spread of Panama disease is an issue caused by humans. In an effort to boost profit, companies seek to maximise production, reduce regulatory difficulties and cultivate predictability to guarantee the quality of the product. To ensure predictability, new plants in plantations are propagated by taking cuttings. Suckers, or ‘pups’, are taken from the base of the plant and used to grow genetic clones, meaning all the plants in each plantation are nearly identical. The consequences of these methods means the creation of a genetic monoculture, allowing FOC to easily overcome the similar immune systems of the entire crop population. If a cutting is taken from an asymptomatic plant to begin a new plantation, that new plantation will be infected from day one. The spread is facilitated as plants are packed into an unnatural density in plantations to maximise output.
The first reaction from companies was to move plantations, tearing up acres of rainforest. It was futile; we’re not eating the Gros Michel any more. The Cavendish is its successor. From 1998-2000 the Cavendish accounted for 47% of the global banana production but 99% of exports. 80% of these exports come from Latin America. The Cavendish is resistant to the Race 1 FOC strains and can be planted in infected soil. Predictably, in 1989 TR4, a new strain of FOC affecting the Cavendish, was identified in Taiwan, arriving in Mozambique in 2015 and Colombia in 2019. Race 4 strains of FOC, like TR4, are also a major threat to localised banana production of different varieties. With a dangerous lack of foresight, the Cavendish population had been propagated in the same way as its predecessor – genetic monoculture in dense plantations. Now facing the same pathogenic problem, the Cavendish is equally doomed.
The Cavendish has no successor. We can only turn to genetic modification to develop a new resistant banana. This will end the same way, FOC will mutate and we will have to repeat the process. It will even open up newer and more modern cataclysms – the transfer of unnatural genes to the environment, superweeds, and so on.
There are real solutions: using sterile tissue culture to propagate plants, properly utilising sterilisation and quarantine, reducing plant density in plantations, cultivating multiple varieties of banana – a reappraisal of agricultural methods and a reintroduction of diversity. These changes would be costly, require the upheaval of current supply chains, and lower efficiency of production. This is incompatible with the capitalist mode of production whose primary concern is the accumulation of capital. No business would make these necessary changes as it would stand in their way of profit making.
In socialist Cuba, where protection of the environment is enshrined in the constitution, we see a different story. Cultivated land is operated cooperatively and not by international corporations. The focus is on producing diverse crops and using ecologically friendly methods to prevent ecosystem destruction and preserve biodiversity. This is possible due to the political impetus being on meeting the needs of the population and the planet, rather than on the expansion and accumulation of capital.
The banana industry is a vital part of the economies of many underdeveloped nations and thousands rely on the banana as a livelihood. If the banana industry collapses into crisis again, who will bail out these workers? The capitalist system has proven it cannot solve serious long term environmental and ecological problems associated with agriculture, and as the system falls deeper into crisis it will only exacerbate these problems. The necessity for a socialist system is clear.
Chris Robert
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 280 February/March 2021
