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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the response of Afro-Jamaican smallholders in late-colonial Jamaica to the banana crop killing fungus known as Panama Disease. It analyzes how smallholders' responses to the disease shaped both the trajectory of the disease and of Jamaica's agroecosystem more broadly.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores how Jamaican farmers grappled with Panama Disease, a fungus that infects and kills any banana plant it comes into contact with, in twentieth century Jamaica.. It argues that Jamaican smallholders were the human heart of the multispecies assemblage that formed around the disease. These smallholders cultivated many of the bananas exported and relied on the trade for much of their income. Throughout their days, they interacted constantly, both knowingly and unknowingly, with the microbes behind Panama Disease and the plants it affected. Through their constant mobility, both to and from the island and across it, smallholders acted as carriers for the pathogen, as it latched onto their boots, cutlasses, and clothes. On their farms, they worked to manage the disease once it was discovered, having to choose between their vernacular knowledge about cultivation that offered little in terms of disease mitigation and the imposed orders from colonial officials that would result in the forced destruction of often the entirety of their crops to prevent further spread. Faced with this difficult choice, many smallholders opted to abandon the potential profits of bananas in the hopes that sugar, which could be grown without problem in Panama Disease infested soil, would provide a stable base for economic success. This decision, repeated by countless smallholders throughout the island, put Jamaica's agricultural outlook on a path that resulted in a shift towards sugar and away from the volatility of banana production, resulting in a sugar revitalization