"Yes, we have no bananas"

Rialto chef and owner Jody Adams and her son, Oliver, joined Paul Farmer of Partners in Health in Rwanda for a week last month and posted this photograph on her report.

When I saw the shot, I thought about an interview I heard on the radio on Terri Gross's "Fresh Air." She talked to Dan Koeppel about his new book, "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World." The familiar yellow fruit is integral to the agriculture, economics, and politics of many countries.

Last year, former Globe restaurant critic Alison Arnett wrote about the banana Fair Trade movement in Ecuador, run by Silvia Guadalupe Arevalo Navaez (below).

The idea is that farmers receive a fair price for their fruits. Growers used to get less than $1 for an entire box of bananas, Alison wrote. Someone involved in the movement told her that the price of the box and the material used to line it cost more.

It's a complex subject. As to the line in the song, "Yes, we have no bananas," Koeppel told Gross that one story goes that an immigrant fruit peddler used that expression and it caught on.