We picked the Gros Michel (before it got decimated by Panama Disease) and now the Cavendish because they can be mass grown, harvested before they are ripe, shipped around the world with minimal special handling, be ripened locally, and can survive all that without getting blemished.
While there are plenty of other bananas, really only those varieties could do that. Bananas cost less than a buck per pound. Other varieties would have to be shipped by air with special handling and cost many times more.
Couldn’t we have like greenhouses at some level of scale? Maybe even like, integrate it more easily into normal housing or just larger public spaces? Banana trees get tall, but they don’t get so tall that you couldn’t probably fit them into a lot of places. Beyond that I think maybe the only problem would be, like, humidity, which there’s probably some sort of workaround for, I dunno.
Considering the size of the Canadian tomato industry (all greenhouse), it does seem like bananas should also solve. Just bananas can’t pack as densely as tomatoes, but maybe throw one banana tree in every dozen rows of tomatoes or something. A girl can dream.
We picked the Gros Michel (before it got decimated by Panama Disease) and now the Cavendish because they can be mass grown, harvested before they are ripe, shipped around the world with minimal special handling, be ripened locally, and can survive all that without getting blemished.
While there are plenty of other bananas, really only those varieties could do that. Bananas cost less than a buck per pound. Other varieties would have to be shipped by air with special handling and cost many times more.
I feel like the solution is probably more local banana
We all dream of thicc local bananas.
It’s a tropical fruit. It doesn’t grow well in temperate areas.
Couldn’t we have like greenhouses at some level of scale? Maybe even like, integrate it more easily into normal housing or just larger public spaces? Banana trees get tall, but they don’t get so tall that you couldn’t probably fit them into a lot of places. Beyond that I think maybe the only problem would be, like, humidity, which there’s probably some sort of workaround for, I dunno.
Considering the size of the Canadian tomato industry (all greenhouse), it does seem like bananas should also solve. Just bananas can’t pack as densely as tomatoes, but maybe throw one banana tree in every dozen rows of tomatoes or something. A girl can dream.
Banana trees take up a lot of space. And heating greenhouses would be very expensive.