In this blog post I am going to be writing about the fruit industry and how the fruit industry has shaped agriculture and the environment. Specifically looking at monocultures, even more exactly, the banana, and how monocultures impact the environment in a negative way. Bananas have a very consistent look and taste. This consistency is because bananas are clones of one another. Farmers plant banana plants, which is a gigantic herb that visually resembles a tree (Britannica). The banana plant further needs to be grown in a tropical climate that allows for enough water to keep the plant alive but also a significant amount of sunlight. Because of the specific criteria that bananas need to grow, the southern hemisphere, specifically South America, is where a significant amount of banana production is seen. Not only does this mean that bananas are decreasing the biodiversity in these areas from their crops, but also the bananas are genetically the same, which makes large areas susceptible to diseases. The diseases then can take out and destroy entire farms and possibly extinct the crop entirely.
The Panama disease was a fungal disease that led to a form of Fusarian wilt of the Gros Michel banana, a popular banana in the 1950s (Britannica). Further, pesticides that were being used to help and prevent the spread of the Panama disease are also harmful to the environment. A more environmentally friendly way to stop the spread of diseases such as the Panama disease is by planting bananas at high altitudes where the banana crop is still able to grow but the fungus is not able to survive. This type of farming is known as organic farming and although it has a lower environmental impact than the environmental impact of using pesticides to slow the growth of fungus, there are some drawbacks. One of the drawbacks is that there is not enough land at the high altitudes to meet the demand of the banana industry. Further, although these high altitudes do not allow for the Panama disease to grow, another disease could be able to grow in these high altitudes, which would then take banana growers back to square one.
In contrast to the banana, apples are a crop that are very biodiverse. In the Oligies with Alie Ward podcast, the host, Alie Ward meets with Dr. Susan K. Brown. Dr. Brown is a professor at Cornell University and she teaches in the AgriTech divisions, specifically in the apple division. Pomology is the study of apples. Apples have a large variety. Throughout the podcast episode, Dr. Brown discusses the wide variety that apples come in. Further, pomologists cross-breed apples, creating more variations to apple and increasing their genetic diversity. Apples can be viewed as a complete opposite to bananas because of their biodiversity.
Fruit production as a whole can lead to negative impacts both on the environment and the fruit industry can raise ethical concerns. In both banana and apple production, along with many other fruits, the labor is often not ethically practiced, leading to exploitation and violence. In the reading discussed earlier in class, “We Are Field Workers” from the novel Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies, we learned more about these injustices that were occurring. Specifically learning about the violence towards migrant workers who often work in the fruit industry. There are different types violence that individuals experience. Symbolic violence, which is a concept that looks at the dynamics of social structures of inequalities and structures, and structural violence, which is the configurations of social inequalities (Holmes 43-44). To help make the fruit industry more sustainable, we as consumers need to be aware of how our fruits come to be along with the farming practices and treatment of those who get our fruit to our table.
https://www.britannica.com/plant/banana-plant
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2ovrV7IMSnl6hxYLrXECvB?si=zViiJb2dS-aEYIEe5r9KyA
Download Fresh Fruit Broken Bodies – Holmes (2023).pdf