Effect of banana bacterial wilt on the livelihoods of banana farmers: a case of Kasenda Sub-county, Kabarole District

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