These are Australian things.
Australia’s banana crop has been devastated by bad weather and Panama Disease. Now, the country is going to be imposing a AUS 1.7 cent-per-kilo (1.5 cents US) levy on the fruit. It will be applied at the wholesale level, then passed on to the consumer, starting July 1.
Nicky Singh, president of the Australian Banana Growers Council, said that revenues from the tax would raise $5 million AUS (4.7 million US) to fund “promotions, research and development, and plant health programs.”
The imposition of a single-foodstuff tax is a big development, and another indication of how serious the problem of banana disease is. Australia, as I’ve noted before, is becoming a world epicenter for banana problems. 85% of the country’s crop was destroyed by a cyclone in 2007, leaving the remaining fruit vulnerable to Panama Disease, which began to spread aggressively last year, despite a quarantine program designed to stop the malady.
News report on banana tax here.
Earlier Australia report here.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
