National Banana Day

The banana you eat is a Cavendish one of about 1,000 banana varieties that exist globally, but the only one sold commercially in almost every supermarket in the United States. Every Cavendish on Earth is genetically identical, a clone. Bananas don't grow from seeds; they grow from corms (bulb-like roots). Every plant is a vegetative copy of every other plant. This makes them incredibly consistent, and incredibly vulnerable to disease.

The Cavendish replaced the Gros Michel banana in the 1950s after a fungal disease called Panama Disease wiped out Gros Michel plantations across Central and South America. The industry shifted entirely to the disease-resistant (at the time) Cavendish in about a decade. A new strain of Panama Disease (TR4) is now spreading through Cavendish plantations worldwide. The Cavendish may be gone within a generation, and its successor has not been identified.

The banana logistics are astounding. An Ecuadorian banana reaches a store in Des Moines about 2 weeks after being picked green on a plantation. Refrigerated ships, refrigerated rail, gas-ripened warehouses (bananas are ripened on demand with ethylene gas), then trucked to stores. The entire supply chain exists because bananas spoil fast and Americans love them cheap.

Americans eat 27 pounds of bananas per person per year, more than any other fresh fruit. The industry is largely dominated by three companies: Chiquita (formerly United Fruit), Dole, and Del Monte. Their 20th-century history includes actual coups (see the term "banana republic"), labor abuses, and strongman alliances. The modern industry is cleaner but still fragile. National Banana Day, third Wednesday of April, is the day to remember what $0.25 actually buys you.

Four things that make bananas weird and interesting:

Six varieties beyond the Cavendish. Asian and Latin markets carry them: