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Fascinating op-ed piece in the NYT on bananas. I had been aware of the sordid history of United Fruit (now Chiquita) and how they brutalized workers in Central and South America and leveraged their power to turn America’s foreign policy into United Fruit’s foreign policy. They even helped the CIA overthrow the elected government of Arbenz in Guatemala in the late 1950’s.
Author Dan Koeppel (“Banana: The Fate Of the Fruit That Changed The World) points out that the banana is the fast food of the fruit world. The fruit is grown only in tropical areas thousands of miles away and responsible for deforestation and other factory farming techniques. Its popularity and extremely low price has been created both by the heavy-handed labor and political activities of companies like United Fruit and by the benefits of low fuel prices (in order to both transport the bananas and to keep them refrigerated.)
Koeppel believes that prices will begin to soar as fuel costs also continue their inexorable climb. But perhaps more threatening is the fruit companies’ decision to invest in only one variety of fruit, the Cavendish, the commercial banana eaten all over the world–despite the existence of thousands of banana varieties, most unknown outside of Asia. A fungus epidemic could wipe out what is a banana monoculture, threatening the existence of the fruit. Far fetched? It’s already happened. In the early 1900’s everyone was eating a monoculture banana called the Gros Michel. A fungus called Panama disease washed over the region and by 1960 had made the Gros Michel variety extinct. The Cavenbdish variety was brought in from China and survived the fungus–even though the product was less tasty and more easily bruised than the Gros Michel.
Koeppel reports that a new, more virulent, strain of Panama disease has arisen and will threaten the Latin American growing fields. Banana companies have done little to invest in ways to counteract the fungus and next to nothing to preserve other varieties of bananas. Koeppel even foresees the end of bananas:
In recent years, American consumers have begun seeing the benefits — to health, to the economy and to the environment — of buying foods that are grown close to our homes. Getting used to life without bananas will take some adjustment. What other fruit can you slice onto your breakfast cereal? But bananas have always been an emblem of a long-distance food chain. Perhaps it’s time we recognize bananas for what they are: an exotic fruit that, some day soon, may slip beyond our reach.
Globalization and its discontents don’t get starker for me than the recent scare regarding the recall of most of the United State’s supply of the medicine Heparin. Somewhere in the chain of actors responsible for manufacturing the drug, most likely somewhere in China, a drug was added to the mixture that mimicked the actions of the real drug. Unfortunately, the drug was added in lieu of the customary ingredients, rendering the entire drug worthless.
Heparin is used throughout hospitals worldwide as a blood thinner. In 2006, I spent two weeks hooked up to an IV of Heparin as I fought off a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lung. If the Heparin hadn’t helped dissolve the clot, my option was a clot busting drug that carried a very small chance of causing a cerebral hemmorhage.
If this scare wasn’t enough to send a chill through me, the photo in the NY Times article of the small family workshop in China where the first step in the manufacture of Heparin begins sent me around the bend. The manufacture of Heparin starts by extracting mucous membranes from pig intestines. Chitlins saved my life!
So, forget offshoring Heparin manufacture to some back-alley Chinese outfit. Just go to the Chitlin’ Strut held every year in Salley, South Carolina. I went once back in the 1980’s, they’ve got more kinds of chitlins than you could believe. (I liked the deep-fried with hot sauce). The town swells from 410 to over 50,000 during the Strut and helps fund charities in the area. Imagine what kind of programs they could fund with a Heparin plant!
