Agriculture and Environment: Bananas

Better Management Practices: Manage Plantations for Continuous Cultivation

Recently, some banana plantation managers have been experimenting with replanting in areas that were previously abandoned.

This is true of formerly abandoned banana farms in Panama (in the Changuinola area), Costa Rica (in the Limon area), and Honduras (in the Aguan watershed area).

Getting abandoned areas back into production
The adoption of the Valery banana variety that is resistant to the soil borne Panama wilt disease (a disease that ravaged banana production in plantations growing traditional varieties) has allowed these areas to be brought back into production, and this has reduced pressure on new areas (Panfilo Tabora, personal communication).

More importantly, this new variety allows producers to continue to cultivate the same areas after much-shortened fallow periods of only 3 years or even less in some cases. Due to the increasing cost of land suitable for banana plantations, more and more experimentation is taking place to find ways to undertake continuous cultivation.