Panama disease leaves and progresses to younger leaves until the entire plant dies. Gros Michel was the only type of banana eaten in the United States from the late 19th century until after World War II. From the beginning, however, a serious disease was present in the banana plantations of Central America. The problem was first diagnosed in Panama after which it was named. Over several decades, the fungus spread from Panama to neighboring countries, moving north through Costa Rica to Guatemala and south into Colombia and Ecuador. The banana industry was in a serious crisis, so a new banana thought to
Agriculture in Panama made land titling more necessary. Moreover, insecure tenure has been a particularly severe constraint to improved techniques and to commercial crop production. The cost of titling a piece of land has been too high for most subsistence farmers. Between 1969 and 1977, the government attempted to redistribute land. In the late 1980s the distribution of land and farm incomes remained very unequal. In 1980, 58.9 percent of farms had an annual income below US$200. The issue of unequal land distribution has not been as explosive in Panama as in many other Latin American countries. This was because of the service-oriented