Posted on 12/24/2013 2:34:01 AM PST by Daffynition
A highly-contagious form of fungus sometimes called Panama disease has devastated crops in Asia, and has now been found in Mozambique. It sounds like a joke, but this pandemic is deadly serious and could affect the world's fruit supply.
Earlier this month, the scientific journal Nature published an article about Mozambique's efforts to contain the blight pandemic by quarantining fields where it has been found, hoping that it won't spread. The country needs more funds to prevent the spread of Panama disease. Unchecked, this banana pandemic could potentially cut off the global supply of one of the world's most popular fruits, a healthy source of minerals that's used in many cuisines.
Right now, I think that a certain percentage of bees are lost every year, and the problem seems to pop up in different geographical areas each year. There are fewer honeybees than there were a decade or so ago. As far as causes go, several have been identified. However, figuring out the various causes is only a baby step towards controlling them.
The problem does not just threaten our food supply, much of which depends on pollenization by bees, but also our source of honey (which, technically, is also part of our food supply). I have seen articles that claim that most honey sold in stores is not genuine honey, that it is colored corn syrup or something. Supposedly, almost all import honey is counterfeit. I do not know how true that is, but I do know that honey supplies have decreased.
America is the Republic - Obama is the disease (parasitic, fungal, deadly)!
“This is serious — How can we live in a banana republic, if we don’t have any bananas?”
First they came for the Republicans,
then they came for the bananas, ..........
It IS very serious and potentially huge.
http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/pub/php/management/bananapanama/
Hey Mr. Tallymon, tally me banana.
Reggie and I would go share that except that Moochelle is here
Unfortunately, this strain of Panama disease infects popular banana varieties (e.g. Cavendish) originally bred for its resistant to Panama disease.
It’s part of Obamacare, millions will be saved from slipping on banana peels.
Also, the association with monkeys was racist.
They had to go.
You are all missing the point of the article. Hidden in this one sentence:
“The country needs more funds to prevent the spread of Panama disease.”.........
And guess who will be supplying that money?
I guess declaring the destruction of the cocoa and coffee crops every other year for the last 50 years is passe. Since that hasn’t worked out so well for the press, the MSM has now moved on to banana crop hysteria.
When you grow extensive agricultural monocultures, this is to be expected. Some years ago the EU legislated (and perhaps other Western agricultural agencies, too?) the length of bananas able to be sold within EU countries, so the growers complied. It doesn’t take a horticulturalist to understand that when you grow such large plantations of one type of banana, if it is attacked by any disease or insect, the whole crop will be in danger. The problem is not a failure of market economy, but of governmental control dictating to the market what can and cannot be sold.
I’ve been reading about this problem for about a decade. Initially they were concerned that it would hit before they developed a resistant cultivar to replace it.
I would hope that they are now prepared with a resistant clone so that industry disruption will be minimized. Otherwise....Yes we have no bananas, we have no bananas today....
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