Honolulu Weekly

Come on, confess. You take bananas for granted.

You know you can get them year-round, in produce sections and farmers’ markets–heck, from the back yard–so you don’t give them a second thought.

You may not even know, much less care, what variety you’re eating, or where they were grown, unless you’re a local banana farmer, whose numbers are steadily dwindling. Oddly enough, overall production is not.

Still, it’s been a long time since bananas boomed in the Islands, for reasons that are no mystery to those who witnessed the demise of sugar, pineapple and other crops. Just round up the usual suspects: disease, land and water constraints, expensive supplies, scarce labor. Now Hawai’i’s modern agricultural history is repeating itself in the banana patch, where farmers are fending off a two-pronged assault waged by cheap Latin American imports and the deadly banana bunchy top virus.

But there’s another factor in there, too, and that’s the ignorance and apathy of the general public. Local consumers don’t seem to give a rat’s ass whether the local industry lives or dies; they just want low-priced bananas.

That attitude drives the demand for the 13 million pounds of bananas imported to the Islands each year. These bananas come primarily from Guatemala, Ecuador and Costa Rica, where business costs are lower–if you’re doing the figuring solely in dollars and cents.

Local apathy has also contributed to a steady decline in the number of local banana farmers and, ironically, a move among some big Hawai’i growers to export apple bananas to the mainland, where they fetch four bucks a pound from folks who appreciate them as a gourmet item.

This lopsided arrangement is worth noting in Hawai’i, which consumes more than 33 million pounds of bananas annually and is striving for sustainability by the year 2050. The reality is, the state’s abysmal inability to feed itself extends even to the quintessential tropical fruit.

Clueless, indifferent people are contributing to the demise of Hawai’i’s $10 million banana industry in another way, too. Residents of all islands who allow sick bananas to remain in their yards create a suburban reservoir for the bunchy top virus, allowing the disease to keep re-infecting commercial growers.

‘The biggest hurdle we’ve always faced is getting homeowners aware of the disease,’ says Scott Chun, a Waimanalo banana farmer. ‘Everyone has to do their part.’

It’s not easy to grow bananas, at least, not commercially or profitably. ‘It’s a very tough business to be in because of the competition that comes from Latin America, and banana bunchy top makes it difficult to grow a Cavendish (a type of banana) and meet prices coming in from Latin America,’ explains Scot Nelson, an associate specialist in plant pathology for the University of Hawai’i’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources (CTAHR) cooperative extension service in Hilo. ‘Banana bunchy top has seriously impacted the industry.’

Bunchy top, a relatively new virus spread by an aphid already established in the Islands, was first reported at Punalu’u, O’ahu, in 1989. Like other plant diseases introduced to Hawai’i, it most likely came in on infected plant material or a nursery plant carrying an infected aphid, Nelson says. It is now found throughout the state, with Maui and Kaua’i taking the biggest hits. ‘Farms there will be hard-pressed to survive,’ he says.

In a failed attempt to stop the spread of the disease on Kaua’i, a number of farmers were forced, one by court action, to destroy their bananas, with no compensation for the loss–a move that drove some into other crops or out of business altogether. Meanwhile, agriculture workers around the state tried, with limited success, to eliminate backyard and wild populations in hot spots and impose quarantine < \h>areas where the move< \h>ment of banana plants is prohibited.

‘They’ve given up on trying to eradicate it and are now in the management mode,’ Nelson says. Currently, the Maui Invasive Species Committee and Hawai’i Department of Agriculture are continuing to search for and eradicate diseased plants on Maui and Moloka’i. ‘On Kaua’i, I think they’ve probably given up,’ he says.

Farmers on O’ahu and the Big Island grow most of the 20 million pounds of banana produced annually in Hawai’i, although not without a struggle. Farm workers on infected plantations in the Big Island’s Puna district are conducting an intensive spraying program to kill aphids. A similar approach, coupled with constant surveillance and vigilance, is also being employed on O’ahu.

‘The virus is the most serious thing we’ve encountered,’ says Chun, who sticks with the crop because ‘there is a demand for it and I know how to grow it. I’m one of the few small guys left around.’

Disease decimated Hawai’i’s banana industry once before, when Panama wilt nearly wiped out the Bluefield variety that was predominantly grown in the mid-20th century. This prompted farmers to switch to Cavendish, which is now being heavily whacked by the bunchy top virus, leading many farmers to begin cultivating apple bananas, which appear to be more resistant to the deadly virus.

It’s unclear, however, whether apple bananas–technically a Brazilian variety–actually are less susceptible to the disease, says Jari Sugano, a CTAHR (pronounced ’seetar’) cooperative extension service agent based on O’ahu. Studies are now under way to determine if that’s the case, but many farmers aren’t waiting for the results and have already abandoned Cavendish in favor of Brazilian.

‘We had Williams [a type of Cavendish] and lost them all, then planted apple, and they seem to be doing OK,’ Chun says. ‘But we still kill sick plants every week. With Panama wilt, you could go to another variety and still grow bananas. With this disease, we can’t go to another variety. It affects everything.’

The virus wiped out most of the growers on O’ahu’s North Shore and windward side, Chun says, although a few big farms remain in Kunia and ‘Ewa. Statewide, the number of banana farms dropped from 230 in 2003 to 190 in 2005.

‘It looks like some of the large farms have squeezed out the smaller farmers, along with the virus, and the acreage devoted to Cavendish has declined,’ Nelson says. ‘Some fields were even bulldozed. The profit margin is better for apple and acreage increased [for that variety], and that is very promising. Once people start to eat them, they like them better. So that will help some sectors of the industry come back.’

Other banana farmers are hedging their bets by diversifying their operations to include vegetable crops and agriculture tourism, Nelson says.

Big Islander Richard Ha of Hamakua Springs Country Farms, is one of them. After 30 years of running a family business that produced, at last report, 5 million pounds of bananas annually, he’s expanded into tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuce and watercress.

In a recent hearing on agricultural sustainability conducted by state Sen. Russell Kokubun, Ha testified that Hawai’i is now importing more bananas than it was three to five years ago. He said that customers expect local bananas to be priced the same as plantation bananas from Latin America, which is just not possible, given costs faced by Island farmers. Consumers need to be taught that freshness and quality of locally produced fruit is not only nutritionally important, but worth more.

‘Could we become self-sufficient in bananas?’ Kokubun asked. Perhaps, replied Ha, but finding adequate labor is the biggest obstacle.

The crop requires extensive manpower, as planting, thinning suckers (shoots from the plant), harvesting and weeding are all done by hand, as is the application of herbicides and pesticides used to control weeds, pests and diseases. Five different kinds of thrips (a winged insect pest), two moths, a butterfly known as a banana skipper, a root borer (a type of beetle), long-legged and big-headed ants, spiraling whiteflies, the sugarcane budmoth caterpillar, Chinese rose beetles, coconut scale (small insects which collect on the underside of leaves), mites and nematodes (roundworms) all damage bananas.

So do numerous viruses: mosaic, black leaf streak, crown rot, complex, freckle, Panama wilt and, of course, banana bunchy top.

Despite these problems, production is up, although the number of farms and amount of acreage in bananas has dropped. ‘Whatever CTAHR and the farmers are doing must be helping,’ she says. ‘I like to think we’re managing the disease better, but it’s hard to say if it’s that or something else.’

UH College of Tropical Agriculture scientists have been looking at the characteristics of the aphid vectors to determine how they acquire and spread the disease, as well as ways to control the disease in the field, Nelson says. This has led to more research on various chemical products, some of which are about to come on line.

Researchers also have been trying over the past decade to develop a genetically modified banana that is resistant to the disease; the technology previously was used to create a papaya resistant to the ring spot virus.

The University of Hawai’i recently received a grant to build a tissue culture lab that can produce disease-free planting material for a variety of crops, including banana. That project is now in the planning stage, Nelson says. Once it’s up and running, it should prove very useful in helping to control the disease by ensuring farmers have healthy tissue cultures from the start.

‘I think the state is doing everything it can right now,’ he says. ‘At the college, we’re maxed out right now with what we can do.’

Still, Nelson says, ‘In hindsight, with more strict inter-island quarantine of banana material, we could’ve stopped it from coming to the Big Island, Maui and Kaua’i, but that’s just not done.

‘The [state] Department of Agriculture is overburdened with new pests coming in all the time,’ Nelson continues. ‘They don’t have the manpower for these quarantines. The resources required to really control something like this are really tremendous and probably out of reach. We’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.’

Australia managed to eradicate bunchy top when it showed up down under, ‘but they were really dedicated as a nation to stop it,’ Nelson says. ‘Hawai’i lacked the manpower and the will to really clamp down on it.’

Added Chun: ‘They have a strict legal system [in Australia] and can enforce quarantines a lot better. Here, there’s this attitude of it’s our right to grow banana in our back yard and if they’re sick, it’s all right to let them infect everyone else. It’s very difficult to go into neighborhoods here and wipe out bananas.’

That leads back to the need for public education, which has also been the focus of extensive coordinated efforts by farmers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, CTAHR, the state, invasive species groups and other players. To that end, collaborators produced a website (www. [ctahr.hawaii.edu/bbtd]), brochures and other materials to disseminate information about the disease.

Nelson, who has been instrumental in the education efforts, admits ‘I’m sort of discouraged by the public’s ignorance and lack of concern about the disease.’ He recently called a meeting at a Big Island subdivision where the disease has been found, and just four of 300 homeowners showed up.

‘It’s tough to get the message out,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s pest fatigue. We’ve got the coqui frog and other things. And we have the general population who take bananas for granted.’

Meet the Pest

Banana bunchy top disease is caused by the banana bunchy top virus, which is spread by the banana aphid, Pentalonia nigronervosa. Like a mosquito carrying malaria, the aphid picks up the virus while feeding on a sick plant, then spreads it to healthy banana plants in subsequent feedings. Since the aphid harbors the virus only temporarily, it needs a regular diet of infected plant tissue to retain its infective charge.

The banana aphid is found almost everywhere in the tropics where bananas are grown and was first recorded in Honolulu in 1924. Its preferred host is banana, but it also may infest taro, tomatoes, ornamental ginger and heliconia.

This species of aphid has no males. Females give birth to live young, which mature from nymphs to adults in nine to 16 days; adults live for eight to 26 days. Banana aphids begin producing young one day after maturity and can birth four nymphs per day. Up to 30 generations per year can be produced in Hawai’i.

The aphids range in color from shiny reddish-brown to almost black. They have six-segmented antennae that are as long as the body and produce a honeydew that attracts ants.

While banana aphids can stunt young banana trees through excessive feeding, they usually cause little direct damage. The insects do far more harm as vectors, or carriers, of numerous viruses, including bunchy top.

Symptoms of banana bunchy top disease include bunched, yellow leaves at the top of the plant, dark green streaks on the leaves and midribs, progressively smaller leaves, leaf curling, and small, distorted fruits

Farmers typically manage banana bunchy top disease by destroying infected plants, which serve as a reservoir for the virus, and controlling aphids with insecticides. As biological controls, the state introduced a wasp that is a known parasite of the aphids and ladybird beetles that prey on them.

Source: University of Hawaii Cooperative Extension Service