I leave you this week, before handing off the next week to my colleague, on a happy but cautionary note.
Bananas feed much of the world’s population. Bananas are a staple crop. This map is designed to celebrate National Banana Day.
However, there is a menace haunting banana plantations. An airborne wilting disease that kills Cavendish Banana (i.e., the yellow banana that much of the Western world equates with banana today). It’s likely bound to wipe out the banana as we know it within 50 years.
Bananas are not fruit. They are herbs. They have no seeds. Thus, there is no way to save seeds in a vault, so to speak, to bring the species back in the future. We already lost the world’s favorite species of yellow banana many decades ago. Baby boomers may recall the Gross Michel yellow banana, which was the banana that predominated in the west until it went extinct after World War II. It no longer exists; though, its flavor is often what is mimicked and still considered the true banana flavor in candies. It was richer – I’ve been told – and creamier. It was replaced by the similar looking Cavendish banana.
But… there is no similar-looking or tasting yellow banana to replace the Cavendish when the wilting disease, presumably, wipes them all out. (For an interesting read on the topic, check out Banana by Dan Koeppel. High recommend!)
So enjoy your yellow bananas now so you can tell future generations what they are missing out on.
This map shows banana production in millions of tons by country over the past 60-some years. Each decade provides an annual average for the decade. As usual, you can map individual decades, change the classification schemes used, change the number of classes, and also highlight which countries of the world are already impacted by blight.
P.S. If you really like bananas, you can also view what a giant banana orbiting at 440 km above the Earth’s surface would look like here. This is one of the more compelling videos I’ve ever found on YouTube. I hope you enjoy it as well.
View Map Here
WebMapGPT Prompt
# Intent
A map showing banana production over the decades around the world to celebrate National Banana Day in the US.
Also, I want to raise awareness of Banana Wilting Disease and its potential impact on this important crop.
# Map Overview
Equal Earth projection using natural earth countries without lakes joined to the attached CSV file using the ISO3 country abbreviation column.
Remove Antarctica. Ensure the world map stretches to fill the screen left-to-right, even if the entire world is not visible at once.
## Mobile Map Guardrails
On mobile devices, including iPads, requires that the device be tilted to landscape mode to view and interact with the map.
# Attribution Modal
The attribution modal must be invisible when the map loads. It will be shown when a user clicks on the “i” (information button). When visible, it will close/become invisible as soon as a user taps or clicks anywhere outside of the modal. 10px border radius on the background.
## Attribution Modal Contents
Contents should include reference to Natural Earth datasets and prominently present the data sources below.
### Data sources
Original data from [Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (2025)](https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL) with major processing by [Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/banana-production?tab=table&overlay=download-data). More processing and decade averages created using [Spatial Dataset Doctor GPT](https://chatgpt.com/g/g-69433babe5648191b56993ba465bc3fe-spatial-dataset-doctor-alpha).
### Other Attributions
– Prompt Cartographer: [Ian Muehlenhaus](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianmule)
– Tool: [WebMapGPT](https://www.webmapgpt.com)
– Campaign: [#365DaysOfMaps](https://mapdesign.icaci.org), Map Design Commission of the International Cartographic Association
– APIs used
The map should be a choropleth map showing total percent change in banana production between 1960s Annual Average and 2020s Annual average. Exclude from the choropleth coloration any countries that have no data in the 1960s and only 0s in 2010s and/or in the 2020s column.
Show the choropleth with a light yellow to dark unripe banana green color ramp. Countries without banana production or that have been excluded should be shown in a banana brown color with banana yellow boundaries. Countris with yellow choropleth fills should have banana green boundaries, and those with green fills banana yellow outlines.
# Info Window
When the user hovers or clicks on a country show a pop-up window (without arrow pointers) with a light, banana yellow background and dark green text with the following info. No outline. The pop-up should have rounded corners.
Include the following information in the popup:
– Country Name
– 2010s Average Rank (highest average is ranked #1)
– Decade Average Annual production as a table for each decade in the dataset (i.e., 1960s – 2020s).
– For countries on the provided Banana Wilting Disease list, please include at the bottom, in dark red print, a warning with a red exclamation mark at the start to catch attention or similar symbol, that the country is exposed to the {wilting_disease_types}, threatening their banana production.
# Title
Title the map like a journalist might across the top, left-aligned: “Global Banana Production”
Subtitle: “Percent change in average annual production 1960s-2020s and exposure to Wilting Disease”
# Hamburger Icon
In the upper right, include a hamburger button that has the following options:
– Revise Visualization
– Attribution
Clicking the attribution button will open the attribution/sources modal discussed above.
Clicking Revise Visualization will open a different modal explained below
# Visualization modal
– In the visualization modal, stylishly include an option to change the classification scheme, number of classes, and fields being mapped on the map.
## Allow users to do the following via interaction
### 1. Change the classification scheme between Natural Breaks (default), Equal Interval, Standard Deviation, Quantiles, Arithmetic, or Unclassed classifications.
### 2. Change the number of classes. Default is 5. May change it from 3-7 classes. A quaint slider would be ideal but I leave it to you to design. Disable this when the “unclassed” scheme is selected, obviously.
### 3. Which field to map
Default map is percent change in average annual tonnage between 1960s and 2020s.
The user is allowed to show average annual production for any decade of their choice. Provide in a dropdown list.
When the field being mapped changes, update the map accordingly maintaining the currently selected classification scheme and number of classes.
## Disease exposure.
Please provide a list of the different Wilting Disease categories (as collected off of the attached screen capture of a map above). Above the list have a title similar to “Wilting Disease Types” and underneath that in fine print, filter countries based on exposure.
Allow the user to multiselect countries based on whether or not they are exposed to any of the different wilting disease categories. Make those not exposed, including those with no production, 50% transparent. If none of the diseases are selected, show all countries as normal.
## Closing Modal
Ensure that the modal can be closed or disappears when the user clicks outside of it.
Ensure this modal starts closed when the map loads.
Attachments:
– CSV Banana Dataset
– Map image (with list) of different banana wilting disease ranges. Please use this to classify cities on the map for the country filters. You may peruse the internet to finalize the categories for these if interpreting the map proves too difficult. Thanks!
View the map here
