In an ongoing attempt to save money on food, I’ve begun buying large amounts of bananas. I don’t particularly like them, but they’re cheap, nutritious, and taste good in cereal, making them one of the supermarket’s best bargains.

But something about the pricing of this jungle fruit confounds me. Why are they so cheap? They only grow in equatorial environments and clearly have to be shipped quite a distance. The fruit takes months to mature. Some people say they