Monday, June 2, 2008

What Will The Monkeys Do?


If you are worried about world hunger, the price of food, oil and medicine and spend sleepless nights tossing and turning thinking about Global warming well then this story is just right for you.
Possibly in as soon as five years or maybe as long as 30 there will be no bananas left.

The fruit will be wiped out and longer on the Earth, or at least no longer edible.Panama Disease, is a fungus that's been killing banana trees for about a century now and the disease is getting stronger, with no cure in sight.

Panama Disease is a fungus that was first reported in Australia in 1876 that wilts the leaves and eventually going to the youngest leaves. Eventually, the entire tree has dead or dying leaves.

It destroyed a banana called the Gros Michel, which was very popular for the first five to six decades of the 20th century. Banana packagers loved it.
The Gros Michel had a thick skin so bananas didn't bruise easily, so they were easy to pack in crates, and they didn't need much climate control.

The 1923 musical song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas," was inspired by a shortage of these Gros Michel bananas, also called "Big Mike" bananas, due to the Panama disease.

By 1960, the Gros Michel banana had been replaced by the Vietnamese Cavendish banana, the banana we have today. Still quite delicious, but not as tasty as the ones our grandparents were enjoying and now that is under threat.

Don't worry its not the end of the world, that comes either this July or in 2012 depending on who you believe.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like a lot of monkey business to me

Anonymous said...

I learned something new from you today. Something I believed.
It's hard to tell with you.