According to a BBC report bananas may be at risk of extinction due to long-term inbreeding and large-scale plantations resulting in a loss of the popular fruit's resistance to a fungal disease called black sigatoka.

As yet nothing on the scale of the Irish potato famine has occured... Even so Bananalink doesn't paint a very happy picture of what it is like to be a banana farmer... exposed to high levels of pesticide and vulnerable to their monoculture crop being wiped out by a disease.

In fact Bananalink and International Network for the Improvement of Banana + Plantain are so concerned about the social + environmental costs of modern banana farming that they are calling for greatly enhanced investment + research to be devoted towards the development of new, robust banana varieties - suitable for both African + European consumers.

P.S. Did you know there are 300 varieties of banana, that some are square and taste like apples or pears?!?!