Impacts and Prediction on the Issue of Fusarium Wilt.

The banana industry has been ravaged by the banana disease fusarium wilt. It has destroyed banana plantations and forced farmers to abandon their plantations. In addition to this disease, banana prices have been falling drastically due to large retailers dropping prices and margins in order to entice customers. This fall in prices means less revenue and less profit for the banana farmers, restricting them from making any investments into adapting their techniques for the modern world and the new diseases that it brings.

The banana market has severely suffered from low prices and low margins. According to the article, “prices for a 40-pound (18 kilogram) box to as little as $2 or $3.” These drastically low prices hurt the producers whose profits are also being hurt by disease that ravages and destroys large plantations of bananas. This disease has had it’s worst effects on small producers who do not have much market control and are forced to take the prices of the market. Many smaller producers are not given the luxury of having their prices locked in by contracts and are often paid under market value unlike their larger peers. This means they have less money to invest into more sustainable long-term growing methods that are both environmentally friendly, and also disease resistant. Many small farmers and their larger representative bodies
are calling for price floors to help bring the price on bananas up so they can invest in better methods.

In the future, I suspect that governments and international trade organizations will work to set price floors on industries that have not adapted for years. The reason small banana farmers are struggling is due to the fact that they have not adapted their methods of farming to the new viruses and have been limited from doing so mainly by a lack of money. Many industries in other sectors have been hurt by the coronavirus because they were not prepared just like how the banana industry was not prepared for the fusarium wilt. Governments across the globe seeing this issue should work to set a temporary price floor on bananas to help the farmers prop up prices and increase their revenue. By doing so, farmers can make investments into new farming technology and techniques that are better for the environment and more protected from crop diseases. This temporary pricing relief would be most helpful to smaller farmers who do not have as much control over the supply and price of the bananas as large banana producers such as Chiquita. This can apply to any industry that has large and small players and by introducing a price floor, both will benefit, but small producers will likely have the highest increase in benefit.