Africa is a place of extremes and many of the people who live there exist along side their crops and their live stock. When things go wrong with either of those two things, existence becomes questionable in the land where droughts and famine have been common.
Right now two diseases are destroying banana crops, a viral disease and a bacterial wilt. Both are spread by insects and few types of banana's have any resistance to them. This problem has the potential to do huge damage, both in terms of economics and in terms of the well-being for those that depend upon the crops.
Authorities are urging people to either use pesticides or even take measures as drastic as burning crops down to keep it from spreading. What we hope is that they aren't urged to switch to bio-engineered banana's which have been altered to be resistant. Though it might seem appealing in the short term, long term ramifications could be even worse than the current situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8225588.stm
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