don't slip on that peel

Someone asked me last week how it feels to live in a village under the constant threat of hurricanes.

I really did not know where to begin -- because I do not live in a village that is under a constant threat of hurricanes.

Barra de Navidad has its share of summer storms. That is how we get the rain that makes farming a going concern here on the coast. And we do have the occasional tropical storm.

But hurricanes are a relative rarity. We have received glancing blows from only two hurricanes during the eleven years I have lived here -- Jova and Patricia. Well, it was two until last week when tropical storm Lorena upped her game to be a category one hurricane.
 
Unlike Jova and Patricia, the major portion of the storm did not turn east over mainland Mexico as the two previous hurricanes had done. Instead, it moved due north up the coast as a chimera -- part aquatic, part terrestrial -- leaving wind and rain damage in its wake.

In every storm here, the crop that pays the largest price are the banana plants. The plants look sturdy. But they are very susceptible to damage in high winds. There have been plenty of photographs posted on the internet showing snapped stems and broad leaves strewn across once-orderly fields.

Growing bananas has many risks. Wind being one of the most common. But, the banana plant's weakness is also its strength.  

The fact that a banana plant is not a tree is important to banana growers. Each plant grows only one stalk of bananas. When the stalk is cut, there is no more need for the plant. It has served its duty and will receive the Marie Antoinette treatment. That is, if Marie Antoinette had been guillotined at her feet.

Commercial bananas do not reproduce sexually. They are all clones of one another. Once a banana plant is in the ground, it will propagate through shoots from the sister plant.

Once the debris is cleared away, banana plants, like those in the photograph at the top of this essay, will sprout a new stem and produce a stalk of bananas. That is, if the grower is lucky. If not, the stalk will be cut down and the process will start all over.

I have been told that most banana plants here will produce two crops each year. Most of the banana growers are going to have a late harvest for the current crop. Some will need to start the process all over, and subsequently lose 50% of their revenue for the year.

Wind storms come and go. But banana growers the world over (including those in Mexico) are facing an imminent disease tsunmai. The grocery store banana with which we are familiar is called Cavendish -- named in honor of the Duke of Devonshire whose gardener developed it in the 1850s.

It was not the grocery banana of my youth. That was the Gros Michel that succumbed world-wide commercially to the Panama virus in the 1950s. The reason for the inevitable demise goes back to my earlier factoid. Commercial bananas do not reproduce sexually. They are clones. That means once a disease strikes a banana strain, it is just a matter of time before it can no longer be grown profitably.

And as went the Gros Michel, so is the Cavendish going. For Gros Michel, it was the Panama virus. For the Cavendish it is a fungus: black leaf streak. The fungus has been held at bay in some areas, but it is a losing strategy. The disease will win out eventually because of the cost of fighting it.

Science has an answer. Several botanical strategies have been developed. But the most promising was announced earlier this year. Through gene splicing, scientists believe they have found a way for the plant itself to fight off the fungus. That, of course, will mean eventually digging up all of the Cavendish root stock and replacing it with a fungus-resistant Cavendish.

And, yes, in another 50 years or so, some other disease will develop that will Humpty-Dumpty even the Super Cavendish. It is the inherent weakness of cloned crops.

I doubt I will ever witness a fourth variety of banana on my breakfast table. That would mean living longer than my mother -- who has far better genes than any banana plant.

But it goes to prove, even with our obsession with the weather, there are far deadlier things in life than a tropical storm. Especially if you are a banana.