| dc.description.abstract | Bananas (musa spp) are the fourth important global food commodity. It is cultivated in over 100
countries, covering about 10 million hectares with annual production of 88 million tons (Leal Filho
& Nalau, 2018). Bananas are an important source of income when traded in local markets as well
as international market and provide employment to the rural populations which improves on the
standards of living to livelihoods of people. Despite its importance and contribution of bananas to
the economy’s GDP and households, the plant is threatened by various production and marketing
constraints including: declining soil fertility, socioeconomic problems, (marketing, high cropmanagement costs, post-harvest losses and handling), pests (banana weevil, nematodes) and
disease (black sigatoka, wilt and banana streak virus disease) (Thiele et al., 2022). The study
investigated the effects of the disease on the livelihoods of banana farmers. The sample size was
71 farmers from Kasenda sub-county both banana farmers affected by the disease and those not
affected by the disease that were snowballed selected and the data was collected using
questionnaires. The study showed that males dominated the activity with 65% in all farmers both
affected by the disease and those not affected and females with 35% and the married farmers were
high with 68%, then farmers from 41-50 years were also dominant. The study also showed that
farmers who were affected by the disease received less profits of shs192, 065.88 and those that not
affected received gross profits of shs 549,038.56. The study continued to show that the Total costs
and the extent level of the disease had a significant impact on the profit levels of banana farmers
in the study area. For banana farmers affected by the disease, the major challenges faced in the
banana bacterial control struggle were limited information, price fluctuation, low incomes, and
limited access to credit, and competition from other enterprises among others. Finally, the study
showed that Gender, age of the banana farmer, marital status, and years spent in class, other crops
grown and other sources of income had no big difference between the banana farmers, banana
farmers who were affected by the disease received less profits compared to banana farmers who
were not affected by the disease and Total costs like weeding, de suckering, pruning, labor among
other and level of disease outbreak were the major factors influencing the profitability levels of
banana farmers | en_US |
