To say that you are going bananas means that you are getting crazy. And a banana republic is one in which the people have no say. But bananas are a cure for many illnesses including insanity and bananas may be the savior of this country. We cannot industrialize because we have no fight against China's labor or Japan's technology. Neither can we export gold and other minerals because we destroyed our mining industry and it is reviving only now and will take many more years before it can help our economy. The savior is bananas. Fifty years ago we smuggled some Cavendish from Taiwan and built a 20 thousand hectare limited industry. Our main buyer was Japan. Now we have many more hectares of Cavendish and we send it to the Middle East and other countries besides Japan.

There maybe a hundred varieties of bananas in the country but about a dozen can be produced commercially.

Cavendish is the export variety so far, although Filipinos do not care for it. The variety on local tables is Lakatan or Latundan. Once in a while the small aromatic Senorita is available. It is not common because it is small and expensive to grow. There are other varieties like the red large, the Bungulan, and the seeded variety which only the birds eat but children love to play with it. It is however the cooking bananas that is taking center stage. Cardava is the larger and more common in Mindanao, while Saba is smaller, sweeter and more common in Luzon. Banana chips for the past twenty years have been the only dried fruit in Japanese fruit stands. But now has a market in many other places including China.

Cardava is large and its stalk is larger than other varieties. Its main advantage among many others is that it is resistant to disease. Once planted it needs very little care. Maranon and Fanlo of Sagrex Davao have developed an export market for cooked and frozen Cardava. They cook the bananas, then freeze and export them. They come in three forms: sliced like potato fries, whole, or wrapped in lumpia wrappers with a slice of jack fruit to give it aroma. Their main market is Filipinos abroad but non-Filipinos are coming to appreciate its nutritional and delicious qualities. Exporters have one problem, namely, there is not enough supply. They have an innovative pitch of encouraging people to plant Cardava in their backyards. They give away starter kits of a dozen corms of Cardava provided they are allowed to buy the fruit. It takes 18 months for the first harvest and only twelve months for the succeeding fruits. The average bunch weighs 50 kilos. As someone remarked, it is difficult to die of hunger in the Philippines even if we try. With fifty banana trees one can have fifty kilos of bananas every week which a family may have a hard time consuming in a week. Sagrex has Korean built equipment that cooks, then freezes, and packages the bananas ready for export. Cardava is the banana variety for the small farmer. Unlike Cavendish it needs little care and disease prevention.

It has a big potential for earning needed foreign exchange. <emeterio_barcelon@yahoo.com>