Dan Koeppel's BlogBananas, Los Angeles, and Transit Geekery

Huggable, lovable – but not the kind of baby banana that I’m talking about.

Though the vast majority of bananas we buy – statistically, all – are of the endangered Cavendish variety, there’s a good chance you’ve seen something else, these days and if you’re a banana-type (or have become one), you might have wondered: what are those little bananas?

Both Chiquita and Dole offer versions of the half-sized fruit, with Chiquita selling them under the “Minis” brand, and Dole offering them as “Baby” bananas.

In the “big” banana world, there’s absolutely no difference between what Chiquita, Dole (or any other commercial banana importer) sells: everything is Cavendish. Action surrounds small-time fruit. For the first time in over a century, the two biggest banana companies are slugging it out for a market niche with different varieties.

The Chiquita “Mini” is a breed called Pisang Mas, originally from Malaysia, but now – like all bananas imported to the U.S. – grown in Latin America.

Dole actually sells three different varieties under the Baby band name – Orito, Lady Finger, and Manzano.

The fruit are tough to find, since they’re in various stages of test-marketing, as well as subject to seasonal variation. They also cost about three times as much as their ordinary counterparts. But they’re worth seeking out, and not just because they prove – possibly for the first time to the average American consumer – that there’s something beyond the generic banana. Though the four types share some characteristics (beyond size), they’re also quite different from each other.

I’ve put together a guide to the four varieties, but one caveat: no great banana arrives easily. Dole doesn’t distinguish between the three types it offers – they’re all labelled the same – so side-by-side taste tests are going to be tough. But persevere. The results will be worth it (and ignore the for-kids marketing that the banana giants have attached to the product. Sure, they are great after school, as Chiquita’s says. But this isn’t baby food.)

Oh, and one more thing, and you MUST do this, or else your adventure in little bananas will surely fail: LITTLE BANANAS TASTE HORRIBLE UNTIL THEY’RE RIPE – AND RIPE, FOR LITTLE BANANAS, IS NOT YELLOW! You need to let the fruit turn brown or else it will not be sweet or soft enough. This will go against every banana extinct you have been trained to adhere to. Trust me.

CHIQUITA’S PISANG MAS (BRAND NAME: MINI)

• Super sweet – but only when very ripe. This is a fruit that is awesome when “peaking,” but the peak can be hard to catch. When not peaking, not so good.
• Thin-skinned, so it bruises easily.
• IDENTIFYING: Easy. The only one Chiquita sells.

DOLE’S BABY (TYPE II – ORITO):

Orito Banana, from Ecuador’s Goldenforce.

• Possibly the sweetest of the four varieties – making it (when ripe – see above) one of the best bananas for smoothies.
• Grown almost exclusively in Ecuador, where labor laws are weak, making this a very high-margin, high-political cost fruit.
• Identification: Chubby. If the country of origin is Ecuador, almost definitely Orito.

DOLE BABY (TYPE II – LADY FINGER):

Ladyfinger, meet Cavendish. Photo: Australian Tropical Fruits Portal

• Similar peaking/ripening characteristics as Pisang Mas.
• Doesn’t easily turn brown when cut, making it perfect for fruit salads.
• Susceptible to Panama Disease Race One, the malady that killed the first worldwide commercial banana crop – and which still exists today.
• Closer to a mini-Cavendish in appearance. Slender(ish.) Super popular in Australia, so if you’ve got an Aussie in tow ask him or her for identification help.

DOLE BABY (TYPE III – MANZANO/APPLE):

The chubby Manzano, or “apple” banana. Photo: Thrifty Foods

• Falls into the “apple” banana category – giving it a unique, tangy-sweet taste. Much less bland than our Cavendish, but some banana marketers have traditionally believed that consumers would reject such a different-flavored fruit.
• Definitely the most “gourmet” banana of the bunch.
• Small ripeness/sweetness issue. Can be eaten a little bit less brown if you like the tart flavor, but you must wait beyond brown – until the skin is black – for the highest sugar content (which will give you a fabulous, multi-dimensional bite.)
• Difficult to grow in wet, lowland conditions
  
• Easier to find than others – sold under many brand names (or none at all) in Latin markets, where it is often a Mexican import.
• Identification tips: Significantly fatter, chunkier than Cavendish and probably the other little bananas, as well.

Once you’ve tried a couple, it’s worth thinking a bit about what this all means in a world where the single fruit that we generally eat is threatened with practical extinction. The arrival of these alternate bananas in our markets shows that variety is possible, and that the commercial banana companies are willing to experiment with it (even with the for-kids-only marketing tilt.)

Despite this, the banana companies are likely very hesitant to move the fruit into any testing beyond these niches. The reason is that – according to conventional industry wisdom – there’s simply too much “wrong” with the pint-sized fruit. The main arguments against mainstreaming mini-bananas include:

• Ripening. All of these fruit must be quite dark to taste good. The banana companies are (rightly?) afraid that the typical consumer is so well conditioned toward seeing a golden banana as perfect that wider acceptance would simply never occur.
• Production. The varieties in question can’t be grown as broadly, geographically speaking, as Cavendish. There probably isn’t enough land in Latin America to make any one of these varieties anything near to a market share winner.
• Shipping: These are thin-skinned fruit. Today’s banana supply chain is so industrialized that the little fruit don’t fit into it, requiring costly “custom” handling all along the way. For an industry built on turning an exotic tropical fruit into a commodity as cheap and ubiquitous as a fast-food burger, the idea of reinventing itself to handle more complex products may feel both financially and culturally risky.
• Marketing. People buy bananas by the bunch. Would the price/weight equation shift with a smaller banana as our main choice, or even as a more prominent alternate? The banana has been America’s favorite fruit – by far – since the 1920s. Changing the very size, shape, and price of that fruit into something completely new would be a terrifying prospect for the banana companies, which introduced the fruit to us, struggled to make it our favorite, and have fought – often spilling blood – to keep it exactly the same ever since.

Despite all this, change has to come.

All of these arguments are based on a single premise: that the banana we eat today will last forever. It won’t. It might not even last a decade.

The truth is that, as a living organism, all bananas have strengths, and all bananas have weaknesses. The biggest weakness the world’s banana crop has today, though, has nothing to do with the fruit itself: it has to do with the human folly of relying on a single variety to feed millions.

The half-sized varieties from Chiquita and Dole are not, I’m told, doing all that well at the market. Some of Dole’s farms in Ecuador that were devoted to the Orito fruit are reported to have closed. But the proof of concept – getting the fruit from there to here, figuring out how to market and sell it - has been accomplished, and despite my frequent criticism of the banana companies, there’s credit deserved for that.

The experiment, however, needs to be seen as more than just marketing. The biological common sense – and necessity – of breaking the Cavendish monoculture needs to be acknowledged, as well. It is in combining salesmanship with this common sense that will lead the industry away from the dead end it is now rapidly heading toward. The “Mini” and “Baby” fruit provide a blueprint – even, focused as it is on children, it appears to have been written in crayon.

Tags: Banana Australia, Banana Chiquita, Banana Dole, Banana Economics, Banana News, Banana Science

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 6:33 pm and is filed under Bananas. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.