If you enjoy sliced bananas with your cereal or drinking a banana smoothie, you might want to savor it while you can. Fresh bananas could be one of the first casualties of the dockworkers’ strike.

The strike, now in its third day, has halted traffic at ports along the east coast and the gulf coast which handle an estimated three-quarters of all banana imports.

That includes the port of Wilmington, Del., which is the number one gateway for bananas coming into the U.S.

Ships from Dole and Chiquita — two of the world's biggest banana producers — ferry more than 1.5 million tons of bananas to Wilmington every year from Central and South America.

Many of those bananas are then trucked to M. Levin & Co. in Philadelphia — which has been trading bananas in the region for four generations.

“The bananas are on the water for about seven days," says Tracie Levin, who helps to oversee daily operations at the firm. "They come through the ports here. We pick them up. We ripen them in the ripening rooms for a few days, and then they go out to their stores and that’s how they get to consumers in the area.”

M. Levin & Company typically handles about 35,000 cartons of bananas in its Philadelphia ripening rooms every week. The wholesaler supplies big box stores and corner markets as far west as Chicago. courtesy M. Levin & Co. hide caption