They do. Go to any supermarket in Brazil and there will be several different varieties of bananas, see [1] for the main 5 types. There, having just one would seem as understocked as an American supermarket with just one type of apple.

But they're grown nearby and can ripen very quickly. When they need to be transported between continents, I think that's what Cavendish is best-suited for.

Also to be honest, the difference in taste between the different types is a lot less than between types of apples or types of greens, in my opinion. The smaller ones can be sweeter and have more banana flavor... but it's not a huge difference.

[1] https://www.mundoecologia.com.br/wp-content/gallery/tipos-de...

It's often worth parsing "people would like" as "marketers think people would like."

Or even, "although people would like, someone's trying to maximize profit margins."

And that second one is notably is taken within the scope of that quarter, or the next few years that they expect to work there, or even the next few decades before they expect to retire. Which often conflicts with longer-term sustainability problems like retained biodiversity.

Bananas are the chicken breast of fruit. Boring/predictable, depending on your perspective.

I love them. They're a fruit, but are non-messy, not tart, easy to eat and calorifically denser than most other fruit. Like a healthy mini meal on the run.

If memory serves, bananas are only profitable as a monoculture. In addition to bananas being triploidy and unable to seed, it’s basically impossible to grow and establish the seedless variety of plant by any other means other than cloning.

It’s a pretty unique fruit and it’s economy has tumbled in the past already got these very reasons.

Why do bananas have to be seedless?

People hated the seedy variants. It was more seeds than fruit and messy to eat. Note: you could not eat the seeds it seems (large and hard)

There are a lot of sizes for the seeds. I have never seen the 'more seeds than fruit' you mention.

I do remember eating bananas where the seeds where all about 0.3 mm to 0.5 mm.

Those aren't viable seeds. Cavendish bananas (or other bananas that are cross-breeds) have 3 chromosomes (triploidy) since they are cross bread between a diploid (2) and a tetraploid (4). These triploidy cells cannot perform mitosis and thus do not enlarge in the banana. They still have "seeds" but they are so tiny that they pass right through our digestive track and don't break our teeth.

If you see a viable seed it's going to be quite large, looking like 5-10 mm each: https://www.quora.com/Diploid-bananas-have-seeds-How-many-se...

There’s so much variety - just not in US supermarkets

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20888103

I do see other types of bananas for sale occasionally. Little cluster types and the big plantains for cooking.

When I was in Bali there were several varieties. They were smaller than Cavendish, but all were perfectly pleasant to eat so I wonder why we can't have those in the US and Europe.

Because they don't ship well-- skin thickness and ripening time. We can have them in the US and EU, but not at a reasonable cost.

This leads me to think that the problem is not that "the banana" will disappear as a fruit globally, but that there will be no more a variety that is durable and cheap to transport around the world. So I think it's more a problem of international shipping than the extinction of a fruit.

Can't this be solved by improving the transportation of the less durable varieties?

Oh, of course. Bananas are not going extinct. There's still Gros Michel bananas like we "lost" before. They're just not commercially viable anymore.

The question is whether there is anything that can be readily made commercially viable and used for the role that we use the Cavendish now.

Most of the rest of bananas out there are not very much like the Cavendish we're used to (though some of the small ones are yummier-- if they could be made more hardy it would be worth getting used to eating tiny bananas ;).

Consumers in some countries don't even know there is more than one type. Monoculture and mass distribution rule. Where I live now there are half-a-dozen varieties that are routinely eaten.

With most of those, each type has a distinct use.

Granny Smith apples are for baking, McIntosh apples are for eating fresh, Red Delicious apples are for decoration, and the rest serve no purpose.

Russet potatoes are for baking, stew, and fries. Purple potatoes are for frying up with steak. The rest serve no purpose.

It's different with bananas. Cavendish is good. Maybe the Gros Michel is good too, but I wouldn't know. The rest are variations of sour, mushy, slimy, and too tiny. It's also a problem of telling when a banana is ripe. It is easy to memorize exactly how a single variety of banana ripens. If there are more varieties, they get mixed up and eaten at the wrong time.

If you truly think other apples/potatoes serve no purpose, I feel sorry for you.

I can assure you, you are very wrong about the uses of other varieties of Apples and Potatoes. You're also wrong about russet potatoes for stew -- other varieties work out a lot better when you want your potatoes to hold their shape.

(I would assume likewise with bananas as well, but I don't have the experience to know myself.)

It's OK -- maybe you don't have the most acute tastebuds or just lack a culinary interest. It's even pretty much dead wrong to think about these things in terms of uses. Food can be a delight and an art, and proscribed "use" doesn't allow for that.

Anyway: if you haven't tried it in a while, branch out. You might really enjoy and appreciate what you've been missing out on.

I do have a strong culinary interest, but I'm also choosy. I try lots of things to discover what is best, and then I use what is best.

Russet potatoes are the best for stew. The others have off flavors or don't soften as nicely.

I have tried many types of cheese. I eliminated all except mozzarella and mild cheddar.

I have tried every exotic fruit in the store except durian. I ended up liking jackfruit, dragonfruit, rambutan, lychee, longan, and loquat.

The point of trying new foods is to find the best, not to pretend that they are all equally delicious.