Original subtitles

It wasn't until I was nearly 40 that I truly tasted a banana.

A plátano manzano, an apple banana from a market in Tabasco, Mexico.

The first bite was a revelation.

Creamy like soft toffee, but with a freshness like a wild Danish apple.

Mind-blowing.

Up until that point,

I never really thought of banana as an ingredient to cook with.

But one bite of that plátano manzano changed that.

How about you?

How many different bananas have you tasted in your life?

Have you ever tasted the tangy pink Musa velutina?

Or the starchy, sweet Fe'i of French Polynesia?

There's the Blue Java with its whisper of vanilla ice cream on the finish.

Burro bananas, red bananas,

Rhino Horn, Musa Belle, Lady Fingers, Mona Lisa,

Orinoco, Goldfinger, Sweetheart.

There are more than 1,500 varieties of banana.

Yet most of us have only tasted one:

Musa cavendishii, the Cavendish.

The banana behind nearly 99% of the world's exports.

How did that happen?

This is a story of two recipes for banana.

One engineered by us,

that traveled the world,

fueled the free market and redrew the geopolitical map.

The other that stayed close to home,

with varieties as wild and unpredictable as the weather.

Both recipes tell the story of the most popular fruit on the planet.

One that reveals as much about modern human society

and our relationship with Mother Nature as any ingredient on earth.

Because the truth, when you peel back the banana's history,

is almost too wild to believe.

60 rupees, 60 rupees, 60 rupees.

270.130, 130.

200 rupees. 150, 60, 70, 80.180.

Bananas are thought to be

one of the world's first domesticated fruits.

Ancient Buddhist texts place them in India as far back as 500 BC,

where Hindus call them, "the fruit of the wise men."

Today, India grows nearly a quarter of the world's bananas.

Here, the fruit is an essential ingredient of daily life.

A divine offering in religious ceremonies.

An auspicious decoration for weddings.

And a staple of most meals.

Dozens of varieties of every size,

shape, color and flavor

serve a specific culinary purpose.

But nowhere is banana diversity celebrated more magnificently

than in the southwest region of Kerala.

Here, Vinod Nair has dedicated his life to fighting for the humble fruit.

Over the past 30 years, he's created a veritable Garden of Eden,

one of the largest and rarest private banana collections in the world.

I have collected around 520 varieties of bananas.

The groups in Kerala who were responsible for protecting banana varieties

did not do their job.

This made me want to take action.

That is how I ended up collecting so many varieties.

We had little support when we first started.

And people think it's unusual that I'm helping my father.

I have a master's degree in engineering.

So, they assumed I was crazy as well.

But we are doing something that no one else in the world is doing.

Farmers often avoid

cultivating banana varieties that yield smaller clusters of fruit

because their primary motivation is to generate profit.

I do things differently.

Wherever there is banana, I will be there.

For Vinod and his son Abaneesh,

every day is centered around the banana.

They're not alone.

Communities across the world have been built around the fruit.

I started working with bananas when I was 15 years old.

All my life has been here in the Zona Bananera.

We all depend on bananas.

Kids, I love you. Take care of yourselves.

Bye!

We, the cleaners, take the bunches and do the clusters.

There are clusters of four, six, seven, and eight.

The crown must be very square...

because what is sold is only the look.

As the saying goes, you have to put makeup on the banana for it to be bought.

I can't tell you how many clusters I clean.

A lot. More than 3,000 a day.

Every pallet carries between 48 and 56 boxes.

Each box carries from 17 to 20 clusters.

It's a huge amount.

Plantations, like this one in Colombia,

grow exclusively one banana, the Cavendish.

The one we all know and love.

The Cavendish has been there for me

in more times and in more places than I can count:

on a grueling ferry to Germany,

an endless flight to Australia,

after countless workouts and hikes and long bike rides.

I've seen them in every airport and convenience store in the world.

I've had banana sliced over pancakes,

dipped in chocolate,

flambéed with booze, washed down with a hot cup of coffee.

We keep our kitchen at noma stocked at all times with a mountain of bananas.

Without the Cavendish,

I'm not sure we'd get through prep for dinner service.

And I'm sure it's been there for you too.

But with so many different kinds of banana in the world,

how did this one variety come to dominate Latin America,

our grocery stores and our cereal bowls?

The recipe for banana dominance begins with one special ingredient,

a man named Minor Cooper Keith.

In 1871, Minor Keith set out to Costa Rica to find his fortune.

This was the era of the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts,

Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush.

A time when western entrepreneurs believed the world was theirs for the taking.

His plan?

To build a railroad from San José to the Caribbean

and export Costa Rica's rich natural resources.

All Keith had to do was the impossible.

Lay 200 kilometers of train tracks through one of the densest jungles in the world.

For the next 20 years, he waged a war with nature.

As his workers toiled in the hot sun,

Keith looked for a cheap way to feed them.

He turned to a strange local fruit

that was tasty, nutritious and easy to grow.

Bananas.

All told, more than 5,000 people died building the Costa Rican railroad.

But planted along those tracks

was the foundation of Keith's future banana empire.

In India, it's said that if you grow bananas, you will never go hungry.

The banana tree is unique

in that all parts of it are edible.

Every part of the banana tree is useful, from its leaves to its roots.

Now cut the stem.

Don't forget to clean it.

Bananas in this part of the world

aren't just for quick, easy snacking.

They're used as an ingredient in an incredible variety of recipes.

Spices bloomed in clarified butter,

dried chilies,

curry leaves.

These types of bold flavors aren't ones I normally associated with banana.

Even the flower,

I had no idea that you could transform a banana flower

the way cooks do here.

Pickled stems,

shredded peels,

leaves used both for cooking and for serving.

Every part of the banana has a place in the kitchen.

In the magic hands of local cooks like Vijaya,

India's abundance of bananas

can be transformed into flavors and textures

many of us never thought possible with the fruit.

But even here, in a world of dizzying diversity,

India's commercial banana farmers

are focusing on the more profitable export-friendly bananas,

like the high-yielding, slow-ripening Cavendish.

This makes the work done by the father and son team all the more vital.

With their collection, Vinod and Abaneesh

are among the last lines of defense against a one-banana world.

Because we cultivate a lot of varieties,

the maintenance required for each variety is unique.

Each variety requires individual attention.

The workload is quite heavy.

Right now, I am doing all the work alone.

My father had a heart issue two months back

and had to undergo surgery.

And if I were to leave,

there would be no one to tend to the farm and care for my father.

So, that leaves me with no option except to stay here.

There is a possibility that my son may choose a different path.

How can I predict the future?

This is considered an offering.

We do it for a good future.

I pray for my father's good health and a prosperous future for myself.

The world in front of me is huge.

I have the opportunity to take a different path if I so desire.

But I'm more concerned about what will happen next.

Though bananas have been central

to India's existence for millennia...

Where do bananas come from?

...back in Minor Keith's day,

most of the Western world had never laid eyes on one.

The captain of the ship had to explain how to peel these strange fruit.

Even then, some of the kids didn't seem to know how to eat them.

How do you take a tropical fruit,

that most people had never seen before,

and turn it into a staple of the global diet?

By unleashing the kind of marketing campaign the world had never seen.

One that rippled through Western culture for decades.

If you feel it, peel it.

And is still being felt today.

Banana?

Hey, what the...

Minor Keith's business, the United Fruit Company,

flooded the market with newspaper ads, radio jingles,

even a book called The Food Value of the Banana.

New recipes were invented.

Pamphlets were handed out in classrooms touting their nutritional benefits.

They turned to doctors, celebrities and, of course,

a little anthropomorphized banana to get the message out.

I'm Chiquita banana And I've come to say

Bananas have to ripen in a certain way

The result?

Bananas went from an obscure jungle fruit

to one of the most popular items in the Western pantry

in a matter of a few years.

Bananas are a favorite breakfast fruit in every home.

The United Fruit Company didn't follow the recipe.

They wrote it.

They controlled every piece of the production,

the land, the workers, the transportation, the marketing and sales.

They centered their business around just one variety of banana

to maximize productivity and keep costs low.

This ushered in a radical new era in industrialized food.

One that forever changed how food is grown and sold.

It's one of the reasons why a fresh banana

can be shipped halfway around the world to my kitchen in Copenhagen

for a quarter of the cost of an apple grown down the road.

And as business boomed for United Fruit,

bananas became vital to the economies

and daily lives of millions in Latin America.

My whole family has worked with bananas.

I learned to do this because of them.

I really like to cook with bananas.

My eldest son loves stuffed and regular fried plantains.

With the peel, I make a delicious jam.

I don't waste anything.

Imagine what someone has to do with this fruit.

Someone has to remove the little leaves.

Someone has to clean this plant.

In other words, this plant is practically someone's child.

I say, "My God, this banana is beautiful."

Why? Because here, we do things with love.

None of my children want to work in the banana field.

It's a tough job.

All jobs are hard. No job is easy.

If they don't want to work with bananas

and want to pursue a career other than bananas,

well, I ask God for a good life and health.

Because 95% of people in this area work with the banana.

The food is delicious.

Thank the Lord. Food is sacred.

We depend on them for practically everything.

When you see a banana,

you must realize that behind this banana there are several families.

Next time, you already know what you have to cook.

And if I get tired?

I cook.

Oh no! It's your turn.

It wasn't just one person.

An entire family did it

because their entire family depends on that person.

Bananas are everything.

As the world was gobbling up bananas,

the Americans in charge of United Fruit continued to buy up land

and expand production across Latin America.

The company became so successful and so powerful

that they redrew the geopolitical map of the 20th century.

Where do you think the name banana republic came from?

Indigenous farmers, labor uprisings,

disagreeable politicians.

If there were any obstacle they couldn't handle themselves,

the United Fruit Company just called on its friends

in the US government to protect its interests.

One of the best or worst examples of this,

1950s Guatemala.

Democratically elected President Jacobo Árbenz

looks to reclaim the land and resources commandeered by the United Fruit Company

and return it to the people.

United Fruit uses its well-oiled propaganda machine,

the same one that made Chiquita Banana a household name,

to paint Árbenz as a Communist threat.

It doesn't take long before the US government

orchestrates a coup to overthrow President Árbenz.

The country descends into decades of civil war and economic collapse,

all for bananas.

Throughout the 20th century,

the United Fruit Company positions itself

as the center of a proxy war against Communism.

I think I understand something of what this part of the world means to us.

The Kremlin must hate bananas.

The messaging was so successful that bananas became a powerful symbol

of America's most exportable belief system,

unfettered capitalism.

It's crazy to think that a fruit could be behind all this.

I didn't believe it myself.

But the scary truth is that this is just a taste

of what the banana did to change the world.

Where did that leave the countries whose survival depended on bananas?

Where does it leave them today?

A killer fungus is destroying millions of bananas...

Officials in Colombia confirm a fungus

that decimated banana plantations in Asia and Australia is now there...

The world's most popular banana may be on the verge of extinction.

Bananas, as we know it, may vanish.

Fusarium is a lethal fungus for the banana plant.

It lives in the soil, infecting the roots

and choking the plant of water and nutrients.

For years, the fungus was a problem largely contained

to the eastern part of the world,

chewing through millions of acres of soil and billions of bananas.

But in 2019,

the first case in Latin America was detected right here in Colombia,

prompting the government to declare a state of emergency across the nation.

This is the danger of building an entire industry

around a single variety of banana.

With every Cavendish plant being genetically identical,

the disease spreads rapidly, wiping out entire plantations.

Worse still, the fungus contaminates the soil for decades.

Right now, the only thing to do is to mitigate the spread.

I work here in the quarantine area.

An area that is now affected by fusarium.

I dedicate myself to my day-to-day work.

If I have to cut, I cut.

If I have to trim, I trim.

If I have to clean the weeds, I do it.

To treat fusarium,

a person does not need to have studied, read, or be intelligent.

What one needs is discipline.

Discipline and sanity.

I work here with four other colleagues.

We haven't been to the main facility for two years.

Because if we go in and out, it will spread everywhere.

We are fighting against something that...

it's like throwing stones into the wind.

Pass me my food.

Every day the same.

Every day.

I was so fed up with bananas that I took out the chicken comb to thaw,

and when I saw the cat outside with it, I said, "son of a..."

Damn bananas, they're drier than my face.

What do you aspire to be in the future?

What would be your dream?

Being a footballer.

Play football.

Play football?

And you?

Gutierrez?

Be the Colombian Messi.

Play football.

And you, Leonidas?

When I was a kid, I wanted to be in the military.

Me, in the future... I want God to help me become mayor

of the Zona Bananera to try to fix the situation in the Zona Bananera

so that there would be more...

that there would be more resources.

To fight the disease.

If it spreads,

the company will end up closing the farm.

And what are we going to bring home? What will our children eat?

My God.

Well, guys, let's go.

It's been long enough.

This banana pandemic is not simply a recipe gone wrong.

It's what happens when you have a streamlined one-banana system.

And the worst part is, it's happened before.

Remember the banana we saw in every commercial,

United Fruit Company ad, and vintage recipe?

Well, that banana doesn't really exist anymore.

It was called the Gros Michel.

And it was the original banana.

The one that made the world fall in love with this exotic fruit.

That is until the 1950s, when an earlier strain of fusarium

spawned a pandemic that pushed it to the edge of extinction.

But United Fruit Company and the other banana barons

weren't going to let Mother Nature get in the way.

They'd been searching for a replacement for years.

One that covered all the flaws of the Gros Michel.

And they found it in a safer, sturdier, blander banana: the Cavendish.

New plantations were erected overnight,

and the rest of us barely noticed the near disaster.

Now, with fusarium emerging with a taste for Cavendish,

scientists are once again racing to develop a solution.

And as more farmers grow Cavendish,

it's a race against the clock and this one banana's grip on the world.

Because the irony is,

to save the banana industry, we need other bananas.

Lots of them.

The key to saving the Cavendish from fusarium

most likely lies within the seeds

of one of the 1,500 other varieties scattered around the globe.

But we can only hope to find the solution if these bananas survive.

I am 62 years old,

and I am uncertain how much time I have left.

So, to make sure that the varieties of bananas

I have cultivated will survive and thrive...

I am establishing "banana villages."

We've selected 200-300 houses in certain villages

and are providing them with a variety of bananas.

Over time, these households will share their produce with villagers,

and these banana varieties will grow far and wide.

I learned everything from my father.

He is my only support, and I am his.

My father devoted his entire life, health,

and financial resources to banana farming.

As his son, it is my responsibility to protect his farm

and uphold his legacy.

I want to ensure that these varieties are preserved for the next generation.

If we want all bananas to look and taste and cost the same,

then will we ever stop fighting fusarium?

And is it a fight we want to pick?

Because Mother Nature will win.

But if we're okay with our bananas being short and fat,

long and spotted,

sometimes green or pink or black,

acidic, sweet or savory.

If we don't mind bananas being cheap for some,

expensive for others,

then there is another way forward.

If we combine the best practices of the banana industry

with the best efforts of champions of diversity, like Vinod and Abaneesh,

then maybe there's a brighter, more delicious, more diverse future

for the world's most popular fruit.