Asda fired yet another salvo in the never-ending multiple price war on bananas last week, by cutting the cost to just 68p a kilo.

The retailer and its rivals - some of whom have already started to retaliate, with more expected to follow - claim that they totally absorb the impact of any cost-cutting, leaving the grower unscathed. Yet there has been a 50 per cent devaluation in banana prices since 2002. It seems fairly evident that somewhere along the line, the growers themselves simply must have taken a big hit and the industry is going to be driven into the ground unless action is taken fairly swiftly.

Sales of bananas have risen steadily for more than a decade and I very much doubt that this figure will now take a more dramatic turn for the better simply because the major retailers have shaved another few pence off the price per kilo. But while a few pennies may be neither here nor there for the majority of consumers, they make all the difference to growers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet.

It is now four years since the demise of the Banana Group, which spent more than two decades running what was arguably one of the most successful category marketing campaigns ever. Maybe it is time to bring back a similar kind of organisation, to try to help the industry out of the hole that the retailers have dug for it.

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