| dc.description.abstract | Banana is the monocotyledonous plant belonging to the musicale family of zingberalles order worldwide different banana types and culture are in diverse geographically district assemblage of species natural communities and regions, banana is the fourth most important global food crop after rice, wheat, and maize in terms of growth value of production (BARSHA RANI PATEL, 2015).
In Africa bananas are mostly produced in the highlands around homesteads and in permanent fields. They are cultivated primarily for their fruit and are used for food brew and household income more than million in the sub-Sahara Africa depend on banana for their live hood and food supply their food security and banana production is being threatened by arrival number of challenges of seasonality poor family system, poor infrastructures, diseases and land segmentation that is affecting the region where the study is conducted (D Karamura, 2004).
It is believed that western Uganda is the leading producer of bananas in the country especially Rukungiri, Mbarara, Bushenyi and Ntugamo. Summaries of the economic analysis for banana, coffee and annual crops. Return to family labor obtained for Masaka was a result of lower cost of production, in terms of the amount of labor required, compared to the other regions. The high gross margin for the south west justifies why farmers in this region allocated more land to bananas than other crops compared to other two regions, in Masaka, the low cost of production justifies why more land was allocated to bananas than the central region. For the central Uganda, the gross margin obtained for banana was much higher than the most crops with the exceportion of finger millet (Eledu et al., 2004).
The high gross margin for bananas justifies the higher proportion of land allocated to bananas compares to other crops. Apart from gross margin and crop yields, the other factor that determined land allocation to crops was labor requirements, land unit for each crop. cassava and sweet potatoes, which required less labor than finger millet, were allocated more land, returns for labor were lowest for coffee. Low returns from coffee could be attributed partly to the high incidence of coffee wilt disease in the region currently and also to the old coffee trees(Jogo W.; Karamura E.; Tinzaara W.; Kubiriba J.; Rietveld A, 2013).
In Masaka cassava had the higher gross margin than any other crop while sweet potatoes have the lowest. Returns to labor were highest for cassava and lowest for maize. Land quality was probably one of the reasons for differences in the gross margin among crops grown in the same region. The most fertile land was allocated to bananas and coffee, leaving the less fertile plots for the production of annual crops, especially those that are not produced for market(Eledu et al., 2004).
In the south west coffee was the most profitable crop after bananas in terms of gross margin while cassava was the least profitable. Like in Masaka, differences in values of gross margin could be attributed to differences in the land quality where for example, farmers allocated to the best land to bananas and less fertile land to finger millet(Jogo W.; Karamura E.; Tinzaara W.; Kubiriba J.; Rietveld A, 2013).
High returns to labor were obtained for maize and cassava of the low amount of labor used in their production. Farmers allocate less labor than was optimal, to the production of maize and cassava most probably because of the importance they attach to the two crops. First, the gross margins of maize and cassava were much lower than for coffee and bananas. Secondly, in terms of food, maize and cassava are less preferred than bananas, finger millet and sweet potatoes(Lincoln Addison & Matthew Schnurr, 2015). | en_US |
