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Humans Made the Banana Perfect – But Soon, It’ll Be Gone
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Humans Made the Banana Perfect – But Soon, It’ll Be Gone

Rob Dunn
Wired, 2017
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8

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  • Eye Opening
  • Background

Recommendation

The modern food industry has nearly perfected agriculture: Most fruits are available all year round; staple foods look the same and taste the same wherever you go; and crop yields are so high that fewer and fewer people go hungry every year. But what made modern agriculture so successful may also be the cause of its own destruction, says Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology who has written a book on the future of the world’s food supply. In this excerpt from his book, Dunn uses the banana as a case study to demonstrate that today’s staple food crops are only one pest away from being wiped out. getAbstract recommends this eye-opening information to all consumers.

Take-Aways

  • The Cavendish banana is the only variety of the fruit available in stores outside traditional banana-growing regions. All Cavendish bananas are genetically identical.
  • Plants that are genetically identical and planted close together in vast monocultures are susceptible to the same pathogens.
  • A new pest has started to wipe out Cavendish banana plantations in Asia and East Africa. It is now also threatening the Cavendish in Central America.

About the Author

Rob Dunn, a professor of applied ecology at North Carolina State University, wrote the book Never Out of Season.

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