Bananabundance

Since 1980, personal banana abundance increased by 140 percent while global population increased by 82 percent.

Bananas are the world’s most traded fruit. Some horticulturists believe that bananas were the first fruit on earth. One of the first records of bananas dates back to Alexander the Great's conquest of India where he discovered bananas in 327 B.C. Bananas are one of the most affordable fruits worldwide and are available all year-round and harvested every day of the year. Banana production worldwide has increased 25 percent since 2010 from 120 million tons to 150 million tons. Today we produce around 112 bananas per person per year. The average American eats around 80 bananas a year. Many Africans and Asians eat that much every month.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), for the time it took a blue-collar worker to earn the money to buy one banana in 1980, they would get 2.4 bananas today. If you started your first job in 1980 as an unskilled worker and upskilled to a blue-collar job, you would get 4.6 bananas today compared to only one when you started.

Bananas were officially introduced to the American public at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. While Alexander Graham Bell stole the show, a few hundred feet away was the banana display. Each banana was wrapped in foil and sold for 10 cents. Hourly wage rates at the time were also around 10 cents, so it cost one hour of work to buy one banana. Today, blue-collar hourly compensation (wages and benefits) is around $36.15 per hour and bananas sell around 21 cents each. These workers can now buy 172 bananas with one hour of their time. Personal banana abundance increased by 17,100 percent. During this same period, global population increased 485 percent from 1.38 billion to over 8 billion. Every one percent increase in population corresponded to a 35.2 percent increase in banana abundance.

Banana peels are the source of many jokes and skits. They are also the source of lawsuits. Today there are law firms that specialize in suing for compensation from banana peel slip and fall accidents. In a 1911 case, Helen Anjou slipped on a banana peel at the Boston Elevated Railway and the jury found the company negligent and awarded her $1,250. Production workers at the time were earning around 18 cents an hour so this amount was worth around 3.5 years of income.

Bananas can get sick. In the 1940s a pathogen called Fusarium wilt, Tropical Race 1 (TR1) infected nearly every banana plantation around the world. At the time the Gros Michel variety was most popular. The new Cavendish variety was resistant to this pathogen and became the world’s leading seller. However, after seven decades as the world’s leading banana, the Cavendish is now facing a serious threat of its own from the Fusarium TR4 fungus. To overcome this fungus, scientists have inserted a gene from a wild banana into the Cavendish. In field trials, the resulting variety was 100 percent resistant after a three-year period of exposure to the disease, which is a good sign for farmers and consumers.

Let’s hope that entrepreneurs and scientists can continue to make this delicious snack more affordable, healthy, and abundant. At the same time, let’s enjoy the jokes but remember to put the peels in a safe and secure garbage receptacle, and avoid lawyers and lawsuits.

Tip of the Hat: Jeremy Horpendahl

We describe the process of transforming scarcities into abundances in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. You can read more about the book at superabundance.com. There has never been a better time to create more life.

Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.