Even though the plant is small, the bananas have been put to use because they have ripened.

As I showed previously, the plantain plants and the entire crop have dried up due to a lack of water—specifically rainfall, which provides the soil with the nutrients needed for the harvest to mature properly. Yesterday, when they went to water the plants, they discovered that one had fallen over; they hadn't noticed it until then. The bunch of plantains—the long variety used for frying—was still very immature, yet it was ripening right there on the ground after the plant had been uprooted.