Do you have these bananas today?

[urban_homestead]

There are two health-related reasons to buy organic fruits and vegetables, quite aside from the environmental factors: First, many non-organic fruits and vegetables contain pesticide residues that you end up feeding to your family. Secondly - and in my view, more importantly - the farmworkers who grow those fruits and vegetables, often some of the

Comments

[komos]

Edible bananas with any distribution in North America largely come from the species Musa acuminata. Apart from plantains and some expensive novelty cultivars, the fruit known as the banana is of the cavendish variety. I've not heard of organic growers using a different cultivar or a even cavendish hybrid that's different than conventional growers.

[urban_homestead]

How interesting! I've deleted that paragraph in response to your comment. I've been buying fair-trade bananas for over a year now, and they are very straight (no curve) and their skins remain green long after the fruit inside ripens; I assumed this meant they were a different variety. Now I wonder why!

[urban_homestead]

Hey, it turns out I'm not the only one wondering about this!
http://www.grist.org/article/the-ripe-stuff
http://ask.metafilter.com/83105/I-thought-organic-meant-better

Okay, these suggest that there *are* other banana varieties favoured by organic producers, but they're more commonly sold to Canada and Australia than to Americans. So maybe that's the issue?
http://www.bananas.org/wiki/Musa_Mona_Lisa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_banana

[urban_homestead]

I think it must be the answer - really, our fair trade bananas don't even look like bananas to me! They look exactly like plantains. I live on the cusp of a Caribbean neighbourhood so our grocery store usually has about five or six varieties of plantain, and I often have to check the label on my bananas to make sure I didn't pick up the plantains instead.

[komos]

Entirely possible!

I'd love to get out from the cavendish domination of US markets, but I don't think that will happen without something catastrophic happening. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out. Good info. ^^