Where Am I Eating an Adventure Through the Global Food Economy by Kelsey Timmerman

Author:Kelsey Timmerman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2013-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

All of these bananas were the same type: the Cavendish. Not only that, but they are all genetic clones of one another. My grandparents ate what EARTH's banana expert Luis Pocasangre calls the “super banana,” also known as the Gros Michel, or Big Mike. The Gros Michel is more durable and, according to most palates, tastier. However, it was nearly wiped off the face of the planet by Panama disease.

“Gros Michel doesn't need diapers,” Luis told me, ragging on the Cavendish like it's a wimpy underclassman. “[The Gros Michel] is also more resistant to black Sigatoka and crown rot.”

With the foam diapers in place, I tied the blue plastic bag around the fruit. Alfonso handed me the machete, smiled, and took two large deliberate steps back. Carlos, who'd been cackling the whole time, suddenly went quiet. He walked underneath the bunch, taking one end on his shoulder. I lifted the machete above his head and cut the fruit free.

I removed the metal pole and cut the fallen plant top onto the ground. There was a little sprout popping at the base of the plant—the daughter. It will be visited over 180 times over the course of nine months. In about a year, when the fruit blooms, the blue plastic bag will be tied over the fruit and ribbon marking its age will be tied around the top.

Back at the banana train, Jorge, the train operator, pull-started the sputtering engine to life. He removed his baseball cap and began to replace it with a yellow hardhat. He suddenly stopped, handed me the hardhat, and motioned for me to sit in the seat behind the engine.

It's like every childhood dream—becoming a train engineer and jungle explorer—coalesced into that moment when I sat on the lightly padded swinging seat. Jorge pointed to a tiny metal wheel. To go forward, crank it to the left; to go backward, crank it to the right. The more turns you make, the faster you go. Like a child at the mall sitting on one of those plastic horses that plays music and gallops, I couldn't stop smiling.

The banana train chugged along, the blue walls of bananas snaking toward the packing plant. These bananas could be floating in someone's corn flakes in a matter of weeks, but at that moment, they floated behind me. In the distance the Barva Volcano, carpeted with green jungle, pierced a blue sky. Wisps of clouds moved over the peak like smoke hinting at the dormant volcano's mighty past. Since it last erupted in the eighteenth century, the landscape it helped create has been drastically altered. Volcanoes operate on a geologic timeline of epochs and eras, but the banana and humankind's appetite for the banana are far less patient. Now roads and railroads and banana and pineapple plantations sprawl out from the volcano, taming what was once impenetrable jungle.

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