Yes, We’ll Have No Bananas

Cecil Adams answers a question: Are bananas about to become extinct?

No, bananas aren't about to become extinct. Yes, the banana as we know it may disappear.

The most popular banana is the Cavendish banana. About 100 billion of 'em are sold every year.

Absent some miraculous intervention, there’s a high likelihood the Cavendish will be destroyed as a commercial crop. The banana is threatened by Panama disease race 4, a fungus that spreads through the soil. (Panama disease race 1 is what killed off most of the Gros Michels.) There’s no effective way of treating race 4. The fungus is wreaking havoc with the Cavendish industry in parts of Asia, Africa, and Australia. So far it hasn’t appeared in the Americas, but it’s transmitted through contact with shoes, clothes, etc, and many scientists think its arrival is only a matter of time.
Although it dominates world trade, it’s a so-called dessert banana, prized for its sweetness. Sure, it’s good for you, but in the industrialized world, bananas are an optional commodity, consumed in quantity only since the 1880s.
In the developing parts of the globe, different story. Bananas in many countries aren’t dessert; in the starchy form known as the plantain they’re the main course, one of the most valuable food crops on earth. Ugandans, for example, are estimated to spend a third to half their food money on bananas.
Banana yields in central Africa are half what they were 30 years ago. Only a handful of scientists are working on the problem. No bananas for us affluent types means we’ll have to find something else to slice up on our cornflakes. For tens of millions in Africa, the potential loss of the banana is a matter of life and death.