Flooding in Ecuador – the world’s largest exporter of bananas – have raised prices of what is traditionally the cheapest fruit in the supermarket. Since January, 2008 – if you buy bananas, you’ve certainly noticed this – prices have gone way up: in Los Angeles, from about 59 cents to as much as 79 cents a pound.
So far, the largest Ecuadorean banana company – Bonita – has made no statement on the crisis, and banana sales have remained strong – but flat – because the fruit remains the lowest-priced on store shelves. But the situation is an illustration of how fragile the banana market is; if disease should strike Latin America, prices will go up far more than the floods have prompted them to, and for the first time in over a century, apples (which now cost between about a dollar and three dollars a pound) could once again be a better value than the world’s favorite fruit.
Despite the troubles, former Ecuadorean presidential candidate Alvaro Noboa remains the richest man in his country, and child labor laws there remain weak. Pressure to keep banana prices down in the face of the flooding crisis will likely affect neither.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman 
I like Bananas =)