Cherries don’t play second banana
Arecent early-morning conversation in the office kitchen at my workplace went like this: He: “Oh, you brought fresh cherries.” No response. He: “I’ll trade you a banana for some.” Pause. She: “I’m sorry, but I think I’ll pass on that offer.”
He: “Oh. Yeah, you’re right — that is not a good trade.”
How is it that a fruit grown abundantly only a few hundred kilometres away is more highly prized than produce that must be shipped in from faraway, tropical places?
Don’t get me wrong — cherries might be my favourite fruit, and cherry season is definitely my favourite time of the year.
But cherries can be grown locally. A few cherry trees on my street produce abundantly every few years — and primarily feed the birds and squirrels. A nearby park contains the longneglected, twisted remnants of a century-old orchard, including a cherry tree that valiantly blossoms every spring, but produces little fruit. Some farmers markets in the area might even sell locally grown cherries.
Despite the potential, few Island residents concern themselves with cherishing cherry trees these days. The majority of the region’s cherry trees are the flowering variety — profuse with blossoms that yield drifts of pink petals in the spring, and stingy with fruit that could fall and foul sidewalks and vehicles.
Instead, we ship our cherries from the Okanagan — a few hours and a ferry ride away.
British Columbia produces most of Canada’s sweet cherry crop, accounting for 87 per cent of the country’s cherry-planted acreage, and 93 per cent of cherry-produce revenue. Most of that abundance originates in the Okanagan. Okanagan cherries are sought not just throughout western Canada, but as far away as Asia, Europe, South America and the Middle East.
Of B.C.’s sweet cherry crop, 97 per cent is sold fresh.
That might be the key to the fruit’s desirability. Frozen, canned and dried cherries are tasty enough, but they simply don’t compare to fresh cherries. And fresh, B.C.-grown cherries can be found only for six to eight weeks every summer. Unlike strawberries, few fresh cherries are imported from Chile or elsewhere to tide us over the winter.
While, bananas … well, who goes bananas over bananas these days? They just don’t generate the same salivary anticipation as fresh cherries.
Yet my mother tells me bananas were rare and costly treats when she was young and growing up in smalltown Prairies-ville during the Second World War. That was a time and place when (and where) all the women were strong, all the men were good-looking and all the children regularly walked six miles through raging blizzards to and from school, uphill, both ways.
Things haven’t changed much since then in terms of bananas’ origins. Bananas still must travel thousands of kilometres from Central and South America to get here. Even though refrigerated shipping containers and fast-moving ocean vessels mean the entire journey from plantation to store shelf might now take less than two weeks, and despite the environmental and social implications of industrial banana monocultures, a faint whiff of the romance of bananas’ distant, tropical origins should still cling to the fruit.
But bananas are not rare — at all. As the Del Monte website proclaims, bananas are the leading internationally traded fresh fruit in terms of volume and one of the best-selling fresh fruits in North America. Since the 1960s, generations of North Americans have feasted on bananas from the time they were infants, and the long, finger-like fruit can be found in every supermarket in much of the continent throughout the year.
Even the specialty varietals appearing in local shops — the niño, Thai, red, burro and plantain bananas — sell for half the “on sale!” price of B.C.-grown cherries.
Through everyday exposure, we’ve become blasé about bananas, while a limited growing season and few imports keep us keen for cherries. That’s a lesson in marketing. Meanwhile, how about some fresh cherries? Better hurry — the season’s almost over.
(Note: One banana and about five kilograms of fresh B.C. cherries were consumed during this column’s preparation — entirely for research purposes, of course.)