You could grow some bananas in Florida but most of the land suitable for it has been used for sugarcane, a government-subsidized industry that Marco Rubio is largely responsible for propping up, weirdly enough

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 37 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (3 children)

Legit I wonder which crop is more rentable per hectare per year

In any case sugar cane has been easily mechanized decades if not a century ago. But for bananas is tricky work so you need very expensive robots or very low payed workers, and nothing is better than unequal exchange to facilitate very low payed workforce, so you need to produce it in a colony or how-much-could-it-cost

[–] btsax@reddthat.com 10 points 2 weeks ago

Not sure actually, I just know that the soil and climate type for both crops is very similar. Also that sugarcane wouldn't be profitable in the US either without the subsidies that Rubio gave to his sugar industry buddies while he was senator.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

the weather/climate fluctuations of sudden record extreme lows in winter make perennial systems (bananas) more fragile. and banana production is less resilient to extreme lows than citrus production (another perennial), which has been in free fall for decades in florida. basically, one weird freeze will terminate a massive orange grove and make the random survivors wildly susceptible to disease. so usually, the whole grove gets scrapped and all the upfront labor/material investment in getting it to that point is lost. thats when people usually apply for an insurance payout and just get out of it all together.

with annuals (and crops grown commercially like annuals) like sugar cane (or tomatoes or whatever), you only need to thread the needle of the growing season i.e. x days between the last and first frost dates, because the plant doesn't need to survive over winter. it's still risky, but you can get in and get out in the same calendar year before the winter. that's an oversimplification of all the other shit necessary to do plant production at scale, but you get the idea.

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh I thought bananas were annual

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

they're like 9 months, at the earliest, to get fruit under ideal conditions. but you want them to push for another 6+ years to get a real return on your planting labor/material investment. so probably more like a decade.

admittedly, the annual/perennial distinction gets weird once you get closer to the tropics with a temperate climate, because what is grown as an annual at higher latitudes (or altitudes) could potentially be grown as a perennial, since there's no frost/freeze die back. usually in those cases you eventually get a disease kill, and/or lots of commercial production cultivars have a limited growth and fruiting window, and then they die (determinate tomatoes).

i know people in central FL who dick around with bananas, but they almost always end up dying way back from a frost/freeze kill before they get a fruiting. i'm sure if you were like on the Keys, or generally far south florida, had a stretch of years of no frosts on kind of an ideal slight slope where cool air didn't pocket or induce an inversion frost, and went with some early/dwarf variety, you could do those bananas. especially if you could baby them a little, like have some temporary cold frame to push the temps up on cold days.

they do bananas big time in cuba, which is not far away from s. florida. it's just the farther you get away from the tropics, the riskier it is.

i also read some bonkers article once in a scientific journal about a 1960s soviet agricultural project one time where they were growing oranges in the black sea region by doing this earthworks system with trained/dwarf varieties in like sloped channels to take advantage of thermal mass. it apparently worked, but eventually the USSR established some trade relationship to get their citrus from a tropical ally and the emphasis to continue went away.

the point being, you can pretty much do anything anywhere if you have the will, the water and the energy. it only becomes clever if you can find a way to do it with one big energy investment up front (like earthworks) instead of being reliant on constant energy input to keep it going, unless the energy is truly renewable and doesn't require complex engineering or materials for maintenance.

[–] RNAi@hexbear.net 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Thanks mate I really like reading about this kind of stuff

[–] ThermonuclearHoxha@hexbear.net 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

In any case sugar cane has been easily mechanized decades if not a century ago

This is why amerikkka has to put a quota on it so domestic sugar producers can make boatloads of money off the taxpayers. amerikkka-clap

[–] CarmineCatboy2@hexbear.net 4 points 2 weeks ago

you can produce a lot of tropical crops in places like Florida and Hawaii. its just that's prime real estate that has better shit to do than produce oranges and bananas. so places like brazil and india just take over production slowly over time.

you'd think that there's some lobbying going on to ensure the profits of landowners, but one group that was making bank are the cattle ranchers and trump just opened the markets to argentinean imports.