Like Gros Michel before it, the current dominant banana cultivar Cavendish is in danger to be swept away from the face of earth by the new breed of the same Panama disease that destroyed it's predecessor. And there are no current replacement for it. How did we end up in this situation and how is it possible that such a massively produced good can be completely destroyed by a single disease?
Big corporations are only after one thing: profits. They will do anything to maximize that. In the case of bananas this has led us being dependent not only from one type of banana, but basically the whole worlds banana economy depending on one single banana. Basically all of the currently grown bananas are clones of the same banana. So there is no variety. Good for the business, you always get what you expect. The highly cultivated, perfected banana.
This lack of variety, especially genetically leads to a situation where a single pathogen our precious banana is not resistant can easily wipe out the whole crop. And that is what's actually happening right now. A new variety of the Panama disease is already spreading throughout plantations.
And the problem is not limited just to bananas. Many of our vital agricultural products pose the same risk brought by the monoculture when companies seek to max their earnings.