What Saul forgets is that banana growers and other primary producers are price takers, not price makers. Bananas and other produce is forwarded to markets in the capital cities where they are offered for sale.
If cattle men send their cattle to sale and the price offered is too low they have an option of paying freight to take their cattle home again and offering them on another day.
But, bananas, other fruit and vegetables are perishable products. If they are offered for sale and the price is low they don't have an option of returning that fruit to the trees. They have to take the price.
The big retailers, like Woolworths, sometimes offer direct contracts to farmers, but their offered prices will be determined by supply and demand.
In this district, the Granite Belt of southern Queensland, the vegetable and fruit farmers are increasingly leaving the industry because the prices they receive don't cover the costs of production. This year, because their land was not flooded they are getting good prices for capsicums, tomatoes, zucchini etc. But last year their crops were destroyed by a November frost and every year many crops are destroyed by hail storms. So it is an ill wind that blows no good.
Cyclones and floods have destroyed crops in other areas, allowing the farmers here for short while to make a small profit.

Can’t make up for whom you are treading; the farmers, the banks?

Saul may have a point when it comes to other crops, but he simply doesn't understand bananas. Growers don't produce one crop per year, like many other fruit farmers. They pick all the year round. Even if a few lost all mature trees (which is highly improbable), these trees have suckers coming through that will produce fruit within a few weeks. Most growers in Tully and Innisfail will have crews out harvesting today.

Regarding biosecurity, most growers are tightly concentrated in the Tully and Innisfail region. Any disease that gets in will quickly spread, because of proximity. The main thing that we can do to protect the industry is to have more growers outside this region.

Lastly, most growers are amazingly wealthy. Their workers are some of the hardest working and poorest members of our society. Concern about the farmers is misplaced.

Japan imports Philippine bananas, and the Japanese are amongst the fussiest of consumers so if there had been any diseases rampant amongst the bananas from the Philippines, then no imports would ever have taken place.
But it seems some Australians are even fussier, and they trot out the old disease bogeyman again. I remember how the price of bananas shot up after Cyclone Larry when we lived in the Illawarra, but here in the Philippines, we eat a variety of bananas any day of the week, and all within our price range.
Even papayas are cheap, compared to the outrageous prices at your friendly local chain store supermarket duopoly.

Actually Saul, you haven't done your homework. Black Sigatoka is an airborne disease, carried by spores, not a soil-borne one. There is a very real biosecurity threat from importing fresh bananas into this country. This is a typical economist argument that ignores the long-term risks for a short term economic gain. Also, a short term economic gain for who exactly? Importers? The Philipine banana industry?

Biosecurity risks are real to our industry and managing them and keeping diseases out is important for our own export market access. Economists casually describing the discussion of the real risks of importing diseases that could further devastate an already devastated industry as 'trotting out the ususal canards', is grossly irresponsible.

Perhaps when you do your homework, you should ask someone who works in biosecurity?

Benk:

Quote..."Lastly, most growers are amazingly wealthy. Their workers are some of the hardest working and poorest members of our society. Concern about the farmers is misplaced".

...“Squatter” is the historic term for modern day farmer, and carried a more honest stigma.