popularity [of cavendish banana]
among farmers
Cavendish bananas are popular among the farmers because it is a genetic clone of itself, which makes the banana’s growing patterns very predictable. In addition, the banana’s short structure makes it easy for farmers to keep them in good condition. For these reasons, the Cavendish banana is high profitable. Out of all of the bananas grown worldwide, the Cavendish banana accounts for 47% of them with 50 billion tonnes produced annually.
50,000,000,000 [Tons Produced Annually]
bananas are genetic outliers among crops because it is essentially a clone of itself.
Since bananas are reproduce asexually, it makes it ideal to grow bananas on a big scale — an average yield of 40 and 50 tonnes of Cavendish bananas per hectare of land — because of how predictable it is. Because of the banana’s lack of biodiversity, farmers are able to predict how the bananas plantation will respond to pesticides. Farmers are also able to predict how fast the Cavendish banana will ripen and how many bananas each plant will yield.
“It is this genetic uniformity that lays the foundation for an $8 billion-a-year export industry.” — University of Exeter researcher who worked on a government-funded project on the future of the banana.
Cavendish banana plant has a short structure.
An average Cavendish banana plant is 5 to 9 feet tall. Due to the Cavendish plant’s short stature, the plant doesn’t blow easily in a storm or a hurricane and it makes it easy for farmers to spray the banana plantations with pesticides.
