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

Barrons: What great books have you read recently that you can recommend?

Krugman: I just reread a good part of John Maynard Keynes's Essays in Persuasion, especially "The Great Slump of 1930," which is awesomely relevant right now. And while it has nothing much to do with the crisis, I'd highly recommend Dan Koeppel's Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World, which tells you a lot about the history of globalization along the way.

My banana piece in “The Scientist.”

Normally, you have to be a paid subscriber to read it. Free access here, at least for a while.

"Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World" explores the 7,000 year history of the world's most popular fruit. Here in the U.S., we eat more bananas than apples and oranges combined. Around the world, millions of people rely on the fruit as their primary source of nutrition. The banana we eat, called the Cavendish, is threatened by an advancing, incurable disease. My book explains why the banana, ubiquitous as it is, is such a fragile fruit – and how science is struggling to save it. The biggest surprise of all is that the banana we enjoy today is not the one your grandparents grew up on. That banana was also wiped out by disease. "BANANA" explains why history may be repeating itself – and what needs to be done to prevent that.

On this blog, you'll find an eclectic mix of banana news, banana ideas, banana silliness, banana recipes, and almost every other kind of banana information. I hope you enjoy it, and I hope it will make you interested enough that you'll want to Amazon” target=”_blank”>check out my book. Thanks for visiting.

- Dan Koeppel

FOOD
The fruits of our labour

by Carol Off

(reviewed with CITRUS: A History, by Pierre Laszlo)

There was a time, not long ago, when most people spent most of their time producing food. The inverse
is now true, at least for those of us in the developed world. Paradoxically, as we move further and further
away from the source of what sustains us, we’ve become more obsessed with knowing where our food
comes from and under what circumstances it’s harvested.

Continue reading →

The world’s most important bananas – the ones people subsist on – are grown in Africa. But, sadly, there’s been little global attention paid to the plight of the African fruit, which faces disease, loss of diversity, as well as damage due to war and changes in culture and population. Scientists have been unable, for the most part, to obtain either the funding to work on preserving and studying existing African varieties, or work on introducing new banana types to the continent. In October, for the first time, the world’s banana experts will gather in Kenya for a conference dedicated to the African banana.

Though most readers of this blog probably won’t find reason to attend, the event is historic and important, and I’ll be covering it as it approaches – and as it happens, since I plan to attend. The key point, again: the world hasn’t woken up to how important – or threatened – bananas are. This is a huge step.

More on the conference here.

Host Tom Fudge and I discussed “Banana” for fifteen minutes. He was a little skeptical that this humble fruit really did “change the world!” (He also said the subject matter seemed “powerfully mundane.” I think – I hope – I convinced him. Listen here to find out.

..especially when the producers are so well prepared that they’ve taken all your favorite talking points. WBUR’s On-Point radio show put together a really nice show with some really challenging questions, as well as some great audio clips, including a fantastic version of “Yes, We Have No Bananas” sung by Louis Prima. Also interviewed was Adolfo Martinez, director of the Honduran Foundation for Agricultural Investigation, the largest banana research facility in Central America. You can listen to the show, which aired on January 11, here. You can buy the Louis Prima version of the banana song at iTunes (and it is so worth the 99 cents!)

(The show also put together a nice web presentation of banana-related images.)

On lovely Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena

Thanks, Vroman’s, for hosting my reading on January 10 in Pasadena. Here’s what the bookstore’s blog had to say about the event.

“Last night I stuck around to hear Dan Koeppel read from his new book Bananas: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World. Food writing like this — deeply focused and researched writing on a single subject, moving from the micro to the macro — has really taken over the publishing world in the past few years. Mark Kurlanksy (Salt, Cod) has made a cottage industry of it, and Michael Pollan’s fabulous The Omnivore’s Dilemma (a book with a slightly broader scope) continues to appear on Vroman’s bestseller list on a weekly basis.”

Read more at Vroman’s blog.

The interview, with host Evan Kleiman, aired Saturday, January 5. Evan called the book “a fabulous read.” Thanks, Evan!

The show’s web page, with a listening link, is here. Directly download a podcast here.