Sustainable banana cultivation: from standards to multiple solutions

There is no single recipe for sustainable banana cultivation. Pest and disease management has been central to sustainability efforts, particularly in the export industry. The global and local spread of pathogens make the capacity to manage such threats a shared concern for leading banana exporters and smallholders. This chapter addresses the gap between implementation of global sustainability standards in the export industry based on a single banana variety, Cavendish, and the overwhelming diversity of varieties, uses and production environments related to local food security and rural livelihoods. This gap between ecologically and socially diverse production systems and management strategies relying on standardisation of a package of practices complicates coordinated action working towards multiple solutions. The chapter includes a case study of a major banana-producing region in the Philippines, representing variety in banana production systems, which shows the importance of working towards a territorial approach that has the capacity to accommodate and connect multiple solutions for making banana cultivation sustainable