Sometimes, the best course of action has the least impact. So it is with a recent unofficial decision to scale back the war on banana bunchy top virus on Kaua’i. The virus, which stunts or kills banana trees, has been
Sometimes, the best course of action has the least impact. So it is with a
recent unofficial decision to scale back the war on banana bunchy top virus on
Kaua’i.
The virus, which stunts or kills banana trees, has been wreaking
havoc with commercial and backyard banana growers since it surfaced on Kaua’i
in 1997. The problem has gotten so bad that the state Department of
Agriculture, with the backing of many in the island’s banana industry, outlined
an ambitious and expensive plan to eradicate the disease by killing an
estimated 3.5 million banana trees with chemicals.
But a week ago,
department officials and the growers agreed on cold, hard facts about the
massive project: There isn’t enough money to do it. And even if the
approximately $5 million was available, the final result would probably only
rid Kaua’i of the virus for a while. Eventually, the aphids that spread the
plant disease would return.
Instead of the mass extermination of
bunchy-infested trees-a three-year process that would force banana growers to
start their growing over from scratch-the state now proposes a more modest
campaign through public information and case-by-case spraying of trees. That
isn’t throwing in the towel, though it’s close. It’s just that given the
economic reality that faces them, the more modest undertaking is the best that
growers and the state can do.
More should be done, however. On Kaua’i and
other islands where bunchy is ruining banana crops, an all-out war should be
declared. Instead of trying to battle bunchy island by island, farm by farm and
tree by tree, the state should take the virus out statewide, then enforce a
quarantine that wouldn’t let the bug into Hawaii or hop islands.
That’s all
easier said than done. But the banana industry is important to Hawaii as a
whole, to the tune of $7.3 million in marketable fruit as recent as 1998. And
if the industry is to grow and prosper on Kaua’i and statewide, it deserves
nothing less than the best shot at giving bunchy the slip.
