For what it’s worth, it probably won’t go extinct. Even if there wasn’t a more resistant cultivar, they’d probably just get really expensive. It’s still possible to get gros michael and others, just not as easily or for less than $1 USD unless the buyer lives near a plantation.
So this sent me down a rabbit hole and it turns out they’re basically not available in the UK full stop as a fresh fruit, even via the European importer I found thanks to Brexit. I can import it dried, or otherwise I have to make a long weekend of it in France to try it!
Yeah it’s a bit of a stereotype but I feel privileged to live where I do on an essentially invasion-proof island with no major tectonic hazards, cheap but decent grocery prices by international standards, and I can get on a train, plane, or ferry and be in one of dozens of other countries in under a day. Brexit did screw up a lot (like importing obscure fresh food on a whim…) but it can’t actually unanchor us from Europe.
There’s a lot of structural issues and we hardly live in a utopia, in fact there’s massive own goals on housing and energy which probably won’t be fixed until NIMBY homeowners are no longer an electoral majority, but we’re too pessimistic to realise what a good hand we have geographically speaking.
since all the plantations are clones of the same banana its just a matter of time until we lose the banan
For what it’s worth, it probably won’t go extinct. Even if there wasn’t a more resistant cultivar, they’d probably just get really expensive. It’s still possible to get gros michael and others, just not as easily or for less than $1 USD unless the buyer lives near a plantation.
So this sent me down a rabbit hole and it turns out they’re basically not available in the UK full stop as a fresh fruit, even via the European importer I found thanks to Brexit. I can import it dried, or otherwise I have to make a long weekend of it in France to try it!
Still, it’s cool that you can do that. Seems crazy to lock down imports like that.
Yeah it’s a bit of a stereotype but I feel privileged to live where I do on an essentially invasion-proof island with no major tectonic hazards, cheap but decent grocery prices by international standards, and I can get on a train, plane, or ferry and be in one of dozens of other countries in under a day. Brexit did screw up a lot (like importing obscure fresh food on a whim…) but it can’t actually unanchor us from Europe.
There’s a lot of structural issues and we hardly live in a utopia, in fact there’s massive own goals on housing and energy which probably won’t be fixed until NIMBY homeowners are no longer an electoral majority, but we’re too pessimistic to realise what a good hand we have geographically speaking.