I guess it makes sense, because how else could you keep up with demand, but my view of animal lifecycles only has stuff like bugs fully maturing so quickly.
Interesting stuff.
Now my question is why are bananas so cheap? They come all the way from like Brazil, but they're still cheaper than the apple that is grown just a couple hours from me.
It's really a fascinating but tragic history of the exploitation of "banana republics" where banana exports become so profitable that a US-based company owned more land in some Central American countries than anyone else. They had (have?) huge fleets of ships solely for the purpose of bringing bananas into the US.
It is quite a long and complicated story, and there are more than a few books written about it.
Bananas are very easy & cheap to transport which led to them becoming a more popular fruit, accelerating demand and supply, etc, etc.
They can be delivered while they are green and sturdy and then they are kept in ethylene atmosphere which makes them ripe so they can be instantly sold to the consumers.
Bananas in the U.S. come from Guatemala, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Colombia, and a few others, but not from Brazil.
As for global production, India, China and the Philippines account for almost half of the world's production.
The majority of Brazil's production remains in the country.
Those bananas are transported from the tree to a hub, from the hub to another, and from the second hub to your shop. The price of transport is almost independent of the distance involved in the middle step.
The same reason a T-shirt made and shipped from China is cheaper than one manufactured next door to you.
The contribution of international transport to the cost of pretty much any consumer good is minuscule compared to other factors, so the starting premise that something should be cheaper just because it's grown locally is false from the outset.
Cheaper by what metric? Also, it depends on the variety. FWIW, my experience is that oranges are usually more expensive than apples, except for the few weeks that oranges are in season.
I guess it makes sense, because how else could you keep up with demand, but my view of animal lifecycles only has stuff like bugs fully maturing so quickly.
Interesting stuff.
Now my question is why are bananas so cheap? They come all the way from like Brazil, but they're still cheaper than the apple that is grown just a couple hours from me.