Business
World Banana Trade Under Threat
Samoan bananas could save industry
Each week a ton of bananas are loaded onto a plane at Samoa’s Faleolo Airport and flown to New Zealand where they sell for at least twice the price of the much bigger supermarket style. And the market cannot get enough of them.
“Most of our customers would eat Samoan bananas all the time, if they were available,” retailer Jim Kebbell, of Wellington’s Commonsense Organics, says.
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Richard Cook’s Samoan export trade is marked with optimism in sharp contrast to the state of the world banana trade. The planet’s most popular fruit is facing a death sentence, largely due to a fungal disease that was first spotted in Fiji in 1963 and carries the name of its discovery point, “Black Sigatoka”.
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Samoa’s Misi Luki bananas could save the banana trade - and bring a healthier banana to the world market.
Dr Emile Frison, head of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain in Montpellier, France, said in January that banana diseases could see the plant slide into extinction within 10 years because it is “genetically decrepit”.
Because edible bananas are sterile mutants, new varieties cannot easily be produced by natural methods, leaving the fruit vulnerable to attack from pests and disease. The commercial trade has made it worse for itself by concentrating on the Cavendish banana, making it difficult to control the diseases attacking it, particularly Black Sigatoka, which is now worldwide.
“As soon as you bring in a new fungicide, they develop resistance,” Frison told the London-based New Scientist. “One thing we can be sure of is that Black Sigatoka won’t lose in this battle.”
In Samoa, the battle was not really even fought as its bananas, Misi Luki or literally Mr Rudi for reasons nobody is terribly clear about, are unaffected by Black Sigatoka. They’re grown without the chemicals that flood the Cavendish.
“We like to think our bananas are the best tasting anywhere, you can really notice the difference,” says Cook, who grows them in Sale’imoa. He believes it is the future of the world crop. “If it is done sensibly and carefully it has a very good future.”
Misi Luki’s origins, like the name, are vague but it is believed to be a close relative of India’s Mysore banana. Unlike the Cavendish, which needs hot and humid climates to grow, Misi Luki and highland varieties thrive in a variety of climates. While Samoa is hot and humid, Misi Luki grows well and uses its hardier characteristics to fight off the disease.
Misi Luki produces smaller bananas than the Cavendish. “It’s much sweeter, you taste something not like the bananas that are grown commercially,” Cook says. They are grown differently too: no big mono-cultural plantations, but diverse setting. “We mix them with other plants. I like my tropical trees and birds.” Importantly, they carry an internationally recognised organically grown certificate.
Samoa used to be a major banana exporter to New Zealand and up to the 1960s the “banana boats” linked the Pacific, picking up cargoes and passengers. But the heavy plantation growers, particularly from Ecuador, killed the smaller Pacific trade and Misi Luki was left as part of the domestic Samoan economy.
Getting back into the New Zealand market has not been easy as the quarantine service there threw up barrier after barrier. They’re worried about mealie bugs which New Zealand actually has more of than Samoa.
Cook, the first coach of Manu Samoa rugby team, said it was a constant struggle dealing with people in Wellington who believed they knew more about bananas than Samoans. And when challenged they were mostly indifferent to hearing what Samoa had to say.
But they are getting them in by airfreight where Kebbell says they cannot get enough. The big American grower Dole is trying to break into the organic market with its own banana from South America. But given the state of the plantations and the nature of shipping, Kebbell questions how organic they may be.
The extinction news is not so good for Fiji’s Sigatoka on the southern Coral Coast of Viti Levu. It’s on the Queen’s Highway between the capital Suva and Nadi International Airport.
It won its infamous horticultural name when the fungus Mycosphaerella musicola was first recognised there in 1912 and called “Yellow Sigatoka”. It took 40 years for it to spread around the world. Then in 1963 came Mycosphaerella fijiensis or Black Sigatoka.
Both diseases can cause extensive defoliation, but Black Sigatoka is far more damaging than Yellow Sigatoka. Yields are reduced, and fruit from affected plantations is prone to premature and uneven ripening. Chemicals can control it, but they are expensive.
In the South Pacific, Sigatoka does not carry the same dread sound: rather it is mystical. For the vast Sigatoka sand dunes at the mouth of the river are the birthplace of Polynesia. As the wind and waves move, the sand, the bodies of the first peoples known as Polynesians emerge, evidence that the remarkable peopling of the South Seas started there.
