MUSA 3 PARADISIACA
Strangely enough, although bananas are mostly grown far away in tropical regions of the world, they are one of the most ubiquitous organic fruits available to us. The reason is that while many of our other organic fruits tend to be locally grown by small farms, and therefore of spotty (and seasonal) availability, organic bananas often grow on a huge network of large corporate plantations and reach us through international delivery systems. We may believe our organic bananas come from dedicated, small-scale, organic family farmers, but that’s almost never the case.
THE ORGANIC FACTOR
Organic banana culture is light years more eco-friendly than conventional. Farm workers at conventional banana plantations are exposed to harmful chemicals. Conventional growers fertilize the soil with 1.5 tons per acre of a fertilizer called 8:10:8, which refers to the ratio of chemical nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium in it. And unless organic matter is returned to tropical soils, they soon lose the life in the soil that depends on actively decaying organic matter. Without a rich diversity of soil life, diseases and pests can proliferate.
“Black sigatoka fungus in banana plantations has reached global epidemic proportions,” according to Dr. Emile Frison, head of the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain, as reported in New Scientist magazine. He says the Cavendish banana variety is being attacked around the world by Panama disease, a soil-borne wilt that destroyed the superior Gros Michel banana variety in the 1950s. Fungicides are proving increasingly ineffective, so Dr. Frison is looking to biotechnology and genetic modification to save the world’s bananas and plantains,
on which half a billion people depend for a staple food. He’s looking in the wrong place.
It has been shown that organic soils teeming with life prevent outbreaks of diseases and funguses that wreak wholesale destruction on crops, especially the kind of fusarium wilts of which Panama disease is a type. The problem is that lifeless chemical soils fertilized with nothing but mineral macronutrients have no autoimmunity to diseases. Rich, organic soils do. In addition to fungicides, conventional banana growers also use a host of toxic chemicals against pests. Nematodes (destructive soil worms) are controlled with carbofuran, Dasanit, Ethoprop, and phenamiphos. Yet nematodes can be controlled organically by proper tillage, sun exposure, and crop rotations with nematode-destroying Pangola grass. Black weevil is controlled with dieldrin and heptachlor; banana rust thrips with dieldrin, diazinon, and dursban; and banana scab moth with injections of pesticides into the growing stems. Yet all of these are controlled with nontoxic techniques on organic banana plantations.
Bananas and plantains are heavy feeders. Harvesting five tons of fruit from an acre depletes the soil of twenty-two pounds of nitrogen, four pounds of phosphorus, and fifty-five pounds of potassium. Instead of applying chemical fertilizers, if the old plant stems and leaves from one plantation acre were chopped and incorporated into the soil, 404 pounds of nitrogen, 101 pounds of phosphorus, and 1,513 pounds of potassium would be returned to the soil. If this material is composted with other organic matter, even more is returned. The result? Under organic cultivation, the soil improves in health, amount of soil life, availability of nutrients, resistance to soil pests and diseases, and its ability to produce extra-high-quality bananas and plantains.
That’s just what happens on the plantations. After harvest, conventional bananas are floated in tanks of sodium hydrochlorate solution to dissolve the drips of latex sap that can discolor the fruit. ....read more
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