تدريب Shadowing: The banana is under threat - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية مع YouTube

This banana is known as the Gros Michel, aka Big Mike.

⏸ متوقف مؤقتاً

السرعة:

156 جمل

إذا كانت الجمل قصيرة أو طويلة جدًا، انقر على Edit لتعديلها.

This banana is known as the Gros Michel, aka Big Mike.

And it nearly went extinct.

Hard to imagine because the myth that bananas are ubiquitous is so ingrained in our minds.

I'm Chiquita Banana and I've come to say...

Bananas in pajamas.

Now let's go bananas!

So Mauricio Catalan's comedian is composed of a single banana.

It is the number one grown fruit in the world,

the most consumed fruit, the most important fruit crop.

It's the, I think, the weirdness of bananas that makes them so interesting.

When Big Mike disappeared from the market,

it was replaced with something very similar, the Cavendish banana.

And you probably recognize it as the banana,

since it's pretty much the only banana we see in the US.

By the 1950s, Cavendish became the most commercially successful banana.

Bananas are so good for you and so easy to digest.

But a variant of the same disease that virtually wiped out Big Mike is coming for the Cavendish.

And this time, there's no replacement.

So what needs to happen to save our beloved banana?

Bananas are fascinating fruits.

They're part of the genus Musa and are full of potassium and an energy-dense food,

making them a staple crop in much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

They originally came from Asia,

likely somewhere in Southeast Asia.

The wild ones are full of of seeds.

So a wild banana is going to be about the length of your thumb here.

And these banana seeds are rock hard, tooth shattering.

To get to the seedless bananas we have today,

humans basically had to find sterile fruits.

It was probably a mutation that did this.

Some of these early farmers found a banana that was seedless and watched it propagate and said,

hey, you know, we can cut this sucker off,

this daughter plant, and take it somewhere else.

And the daughter plant gives birth to another plant.

And this can go on for thousands of years.

This method of reproducing through propagations is also known as asexual cloning.

But it also creates some problems because these fruits are essentially now clones

and they're all exactly the same and they carry the same weaknesses.

And this genetic cloning is really where the danger starts.

Commercially farmed bananas, which are pretty much all of the bananas we consume, are monocrops.

It's an industrial agriculture term that refers to single crop species grown on the same land again and again.

It's driven by our demand for uniform, durable, and cheap fruit.

The variety they picked was a banana called the Gros Michel.

The Gros Michel is a great banana for commercial use because it's tough.

It doesn't need to be packaged really that much.

It ripens at a perfect rate.

The result?

Uniform bananas for consumers like us,

but extremely fragile biological conditions for the plants and the farmers.

You run a risk, which is that if one of your bananas gets sick,

all of them are gonna get sick.

And that was exactly what happened with Panama disease,

or Tropical Race 1, in the early 1900s.

The plantations begin to get very sick.

Fungus invades the soil, making it impossible to grow the bananas.

But instead of diversifying, industrial banana companies acquired more lands as the plantations became diseased.

And all goes well until they finally run out of land.

This is partially how the term banana republic came to be.

It's an ugly history that involves US corporations like the United Fruit Company exploiting land and labor in Central America.

These companies took over farms and governments to grow exports like bananas cheaply and at a massive scale.

But no amount of land in Conquest could stop the spread of Panama disease.

By the 1950s, TR1 had devastated the Gros Michel globally,

virtually wiping it out of production.

Luckily, the Gros Michel had a close cousin that was resistant to that strain of Panama disease,

the Cabin dish.

At the brink of extinction,

at the brink of disaster,

the banana industry saves itself,

when in fact it is only delayed an inevitable fate that will come back to haunt it again.

Speaking of delicious bananas, this video is presented by a delicious yogurt, Stonyfield Organic.

For over 40 years, Stonyfield Organic has been a champion of truth in our food system.

There is so much misinformation out there,

which is why they believe in using the highest quality ingredients to ensure

that what they put on the shelves is the best product for you and your family.

The milk they use comes from all over the country,

including Molly Brook Farms in Vermont.

It's USDA organic certified, which means no growth hormones, no pesticides, no antibiotics.

So the next time you're in your grocery run and you're thinking about bananas,

make sure to also check out Stonyfield Organic Yogurt.

It's also important to note that Stonyfield Organic did not dictate the content of this video,

but their support did make this tasty reporting possible.

And now back to bananas.

By the 1990s, the Cavendish was facing a new strain of the Panama disease,

Tropical Race 4 or TR4.

The banana companies refuse to believe it and they just keep doing what they're doing.

The disease started in Taiwan in the late 80s.

From there, it spread to Africa, Australia and the Americas.

By late 2025, TR4 is reported in Ecuador,

the largest banana exporter in the world.

This disease is really virulent.

If I am wearing a sneaker with one bit of contaminated soil and I walk through a banana plantation,

I'm gonna spread that disease.

But unlike what happened with Gros Michel in the 1950s,

there is no banana cousin to replace the Cabin dish with.

So we're in the situation now where this disease is really starting to have a dramatic influence.

And all of the major producers around the world are now recognizing at long last things have to change.

Now, it's not like other bananas don't exist.

There are actually over a thousand species of bananas.

With specialty farms and supermarkets,

100

you can even find some of these other varieties.

101

There's certainly been a move to try to move consumer preferences from Cavendish to something else.

102

Consumers didn't like it.

103

Didn't taste like Cavendish that preference is such an incredible driver.

104

And to try to get consumers to change from a Cavendish banana to something else is going to be a big ask.

105

So Professor Dale turned to science.

106

My group started to genetically modify bananas.

107

So we know there is resistance to the Panama disease tropical waste fall.

108

It actually occurs in one of those wild bananas we were talking about,

109

the ones with seeds we pulled one gene out of that banana and transferred it to Cavendish.

110

But as you can imagine,

111

consumers have a lot of skepticism around genetically modified foods.

112

At this time, in March,

113

2026, Professor Dale's lab-grown Cavendish bananas are not yet available in stores.

114

We've now had approval to grow,

115

commercially grow that banana in Australia,

116

but nowhere else in the world has yet.

117

Genetically modified crops are highly regulated.

118

So Europe at the moment is very reticent on taking any genetically modified foods.

119

And the other thing, of course, is consumer perception.

120

While his modified banana will likely never make it into the European market,

121

Professor Dale has other solutions like gene editing.

122

In many countries, this is no longer considered genetic modification.

123

There are many, many other crops that are being gene edited and some of them are already on the market.

124

So, to save our beloved banana,

125

either Western consumers will have to give up on the myth of there being only one type of banana,

126

or regulators are going to have to accept genetically engineered Cavendish.

127

I think we're going to have to have an open mind

128

about how we're going to produce our crops under what are becoming increasingly extreme conditions.

129

Though truthfully, science can only do so much.

130

The answers for preserving our beloved banana and the future of many of our fruits lies in maintaining a diverse ecosystem.

131

How do we fix the problem?

132

And the answer is destroy the monoculture.

133

We need to get all those bananas that are so good to the United States,

134

to Europe, to the Western world,

135

because that's the only way to sort of protect the banana and to protect people who grow bananas.

136

What I would love to see would be when you walk into a supermarket,

137

that still the bananas are right there front and center,

138

but there are 10 different ones.

139

Cavendish over here and maybe Ladyfinger and bananas would go from the world's favorite fruit to even more favorite.

140

Alright so we got all of these bananas for this shoot

141

and we want to do a blind taste test to see

142

if we can actually identify which one is Cavendish and also see

143

if we like one of these bananas better shout out to the Thai

144

and Filipino markets for actually having such a diverse array of bananas

145

and we're gonna put the results of the blind taste test up on Vox's Patreon.

146

If you're not yet a member go on over to patreon.com slash Vox.

147

It's so important to support independent journalism.

148

You know, your membership allows us to continue making videos like this,

149

allow us to have fun,

150

be creative, but also really dig into the investigative reporting.

151

And if it doesn't make sense for you financially today to support Vox,

152

you can still sign up for free,

153

stay up to date with our reporting.

154

And now let's get this taste test started.

155

Ben, ready eventually?

156

Thank you.

TRENDING

الأكثر شعبية

ما هي تقنية التظليل الصوتي؟

التظليل الصوتي (Shadowing) تقنية تعلم لغة مدعومة علمياً، طُورت أصلاً لتدريب المترجمين الفوريين المحترفين. الطريقة بسيطة لكنها قوية: تستمع لصوت إنجليزي أصلي وتكرره فوراً بصوت عالٍ — كظل يتبع المتحدث بتأخير 1-2 ثانية. تُظهر الأبحاث تحسناً كبيراً في دقة النطق والتنغيم والإيقاع وربط الأصوات والاستماع والطلاقة.

☕ اشترِ لنا قهوة

يظل ShadowingEnglish مجانيًا بنسبة 100% بفضل دعمكم. تكاليف الخوادم والذكاء الاصطناعي مرتفعة — قهوتكم تبقينا مستمرين! 🙏

التبرع عبر PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – تمرين التظليل الصوتي للإنجليزية

تحدث الإنجليزية بطلاقة باستخدام تقنية التظليل الصوتي. استمع لفيديوهات يوتيوب الأصلية، كرر جملة بجملة، وابنِ نطقاً حقيقياً وطلاقة — يستخدمها متعلمو IELTS حول العالم.

تدريب Shadowing: The banana is under threat - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية مع YouTube

الأكثر شعبية

لماذا يجب ممارسة المحادثة مع هذا الفيديو؟

القواعد والتعابير في السياق

فخاخ النطق الشائعة

ما هي تقنية التظليل الصوتي؟

تدريب Shadowing: The banana is under threat - تعلم التحدث بالإنجليزية مع YouTube

تنزيل التطبيق

لماذا يجب ممارسة المحادثة مع هذا الفيديو؟

القواعد والتعابير في السياق

فخاخ النطق الشائعة

ما هي تقنية التظليل الصوتي؟