No respite from bad news

THE wont of agriculture reporters to pluck out the word "sagging" from unused, then playfully resurrect it to describe any drop, big or small, in either banana exports or production dates back to the previous century. The reporters who covered the "Elliptical beat" in the early 1980s (principally the agriculture and environment and natural resources beat, with the powerfully mandated NFA as a subsidiary beat) never used "sagging" to describe drops in either rice or corn outputs or reductions in timber/rattan production. "Sagging" was only used in the specific case of bananas, which the rewrite desk would often pencil out in favor of the simpler "drop" or "reduce." I know because I was part of that generation of "Elliptical beat" reporters.

Recently, and this is the 21st century, I saw the word reappear from the ghastly deep of near-idle words to describe a "sagging" banana output that led to the dethroning of the Philippines as the second-biggest banana exporter in 2023. We exported 2.3 million metric tons of bananas last year, which made us the third after Guatemala's 2.6 million MT. The usual topnotcher is Ecuador. If you know something about history, of course, you will notice that all three countries were once called "banana republics" by the international media — unstable and corrupt governments, deeply unequal societies, with thriving — and exploitative —multinational companies.