RadioFreeLiberal.com

The Cavendish, the most popular banana in the western world, is slowly dying out due to the same form of fungus, but a more virulent strain, that wiped out the sweeter Gros Michel.

Before I read this, I had no idea I was eating shitty bananas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/won ... o-extinct/

_________________
Lest we forget

You've always been eating shitty bananas. The only bananas which will survive the shipping to the US are the shitty strains harvested green.

people in the caribe dont generally farm or garden for that matter, the ground wont sustain
growing due to nematodes abundant in the soils.
when corps farms come in they dump chemicals on the soils and keep doing that since the
soils across the caribe are so weak. rain forest usually means lush on the surface but not
much below ground surface.

what the 'us' imports is most often the cheapest shit being exported.
coffee and rum are the best examples. we get the rum no one across caribe wants.
we get the coffee NO One in the caribe will drink. at 5x the cost.

this sounds as tho, once again, big corps have destroyed the environment, the habitat,
more degradation will ensue since there is barely a tree left on any of these islands.
drought always follows deforestation, and with drought all sorts of bugs virus and death
commence.

_________________
Who are these...flag-sucking halfwits fleeced fooled by stupid little rich kids They speak for all that is cruel stupid
They are racists hate mongers I piss down the throats of these Nazis Im too old to worry whether they like it Fuck them.
HST.

My mother grew up with the Gros Michel and said they were great. Then one day she discovered she didn't like bananas anymore. They didn't taste the same. I grew up with. and am still eating, the shitty Cavendish. One cut up in my cereal every morning.

_________________
Lest we forget

I don't understand all the science behind the crop fail, but in the Cavendish case, they were able to survive the first fungus that wiped out the Gros Michel. And like the Gros, the Cavendish transport well. But the soil isn't getting any diversity so the Cavendish fruit is like a continuous clone of itself and it ruined the soil on the plantations and made it vulnerable to the new strain of fungus.

_________________
Lest we forget

Until now, I never heard of the Gros Michel banana. From reading up on it, it was basically wiped our by disease in the 1950s and the only ones available were from Thailand up to the early 60s. I guess the only one I've eaten is the Cavendish variety and when you haven't eaten any other variety you have nothing to compare it to.

_________________
When you vote Left you vote right.

Right, that's why I didn't know I was eating a shitty variety until I read the article. And I didn't know there were so many varieties of banana. I always assumed a banana was just a banana.

_________________
Lest we forget

during the day to day growth of drought in CO, in 2002, arose from the ground dryland
distempter (or pigeon fever) which hadnt been seen in the area in 100years, no vets alive had seen it.
there were a flurry of distant still around bugs and issues that arose anew from "drought".

i think the fungi the virus the fevers all come again from abused soils having no mechanism left
to contain or offset these natural issues.

theyve been messing with nanas for years now, altering the DNA so control the size since
they think we all want smaller nanas.

_________________
Who are these...flag-sucking halfwits fleeced fooled by stupid little rich kids They speak for all that is cruel stupid
They are racists hate mongers I piss down the throats of these Nazis Im too old to worry whether they like it Fuck them.
HST.

For about ten years I discovered I didn't like bananas either. It was after I had to tunnel through what I would describe as banana peat, a black moist midden laid down deep under the under hold in a banana boat. Allowed to ripen for twenty years.

I talked about this in another post some time back. I couldn't wash off the smell of bananas. It was a good thing the ship still smelled like the fire or people would have noticed.

Everyone noticed how that banana peat smelled when it was being hauled topside, but they didn't notice it being especially on me. The fellows who had to haul it topside in buckets and dump it noticed it more than most, they had it smeared on their legs.

i failed to mention people in the caribe had much food from trees vs gardening.
banana trees avocado trees breadfruit trees along with the citrus and others. these trees grew
everywhere and you had them in the yards.
i made it sound as tho they had nothing to eat.

_________________
Who are these...flag-sucking halfwits fleeced fooled by stupid little rich kids They speak for all that is cruel stupid
They are racists hate mongers I piss down the throats of these Nazis Im too old to worry whether they like it Fuck them.
HST.

Bananas have a pretty interesting history. But all bananas are clones. They don't reproduce on their own. That's one reason they are so susceptible to disease.

I think the most difficult physical work I've ever done was work in banana fields. Not the most difficult or unpleasant, just the most physically demanding.

I know a little about bananas, but only a little. I do know that indeed they've been genetically engineered the old slow way, by repeated cloning and hybridizing. Most fruit is like that. Blueberries aren't blue any more, because they bred a strain that held up to shipping better but was a sickly red in color. They dye them.

We're also running out of honeybees, but you knew that. It's largely because of pesticide, and you knew that too, but Monsanto has good lobbyists.

_________________
"Our democratic institutions... seem to have been upended by frat-boy billionaires from California," remarked Canadian politician Charlie Angus. (BBC, 11/27/18)

In the case of bananas, the only way to grow them is through cloning. They won't reproduce otherwise (or so I understand).

By the way...the reason that classic comedy has people slipping on a banana peel, is that one of the common earlier versions, had a very slippery peel... not like the bananas we're eating today.

Good riddance! Bananas are gross.

_________________
'''Greed: It ain't goin anywhere,' they should have that across a big billboard in Times Square!"
Joe Strummer
1952-2002

I don't really like banana or banana flavored items save for peanut butter and banana sandwich.

_________________
The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out, the conservative adopts them.
- Mark Twain

Careful! That's what killed Elvis!

assuming he's really dead...

_________________
Lest we forget

Plantains, my friends. Plantains.

Delicious soft & sweet. (Otherwise known as platanos.)



Even better when crispy and covered with garlic sauce. (Otherwise known as mariquitas.)



People ask me why I live in South Florida. This is one of the reasons.

Oh yeah, and mojitos.

_________________
-- Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.
Malaclypse the Younger