Public and private investments for banana Xanthomonas Wilt control in Uganda: The economic feasibility for smallholder farmers

Abstract

Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) poses a serious threat to livelihoods and food security for millions of households in Africa. Despite considerable investments in Uganda by the Government and other national and international stakeholders, the disease persists in the country after periods of significant resurgence. Building on the Agricultural Innovation Systems framework, this paper reviews the role of the major stakeholders involved in controlling the disease in Uganda. Next, using household survey data, it analyzes economic costs and benefits of adopting an integrated BXW control package for the Ugandan smallholder farmers.

After 2015, there has been a significant reduction in both public and private investments in BXW management, which may contribute to future disease resurgence. Our analysis reveals a high level of partial adoption of BXW recommended practices, and just a third of farmers adopting a full control package. This means significant economic losses for non-adopters, as indicated by our findings that households adopting the full package registered a net balance of US$65 per acre higher than non-adopters. We find that disproportionally large costs need to be borne at the beginning of the process, while the benefits are distributed over time, which may present a barrier to adoption by resource-poor smallholders.

Keywords:

• technology adoption
• Xanthomonas Wilt
• cost–benefit analysis
• banana farming
• Uganda

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Removal of diseased plants can be done through the entire mat removal and/or single diseased stem removal (SDSR), although the latter is preferred because it is considered as effective but less labour-intensive. For this reason, the current analysis considered the SDSR as the main technique for removing diseased plants.

2 Key informants are a limited population of individuals with significant breadth and depth of knowledge to speak informatively in detail about what happened and why (Jimenez 1985).

3 An expert meeting held in Kampala, Uganda on the 1st and 2nd of February 2018 was carried out in order to identify key informants.

4 Through the community action, the community is facilitated to develop an action plan for BXW control, and all community members commit to implementing it. Stakeholders at higher levels (local and national government) are then mobilized to support the communities in implementing their plan (Kubiriba et al. 2012).

5 Use of clean planting material was excluded from the quantitative analysis because, although it represents another important practice to avoid the dissemination of infected suckers and plantlets, very few farmers use this technique as recommended by scientists due to the high cost and lack of availability.

6 The same practices can be done also utilizing different inputs, but the right way to implement them is through the inputs we listed. That is why we decided to account for the cost analysis of only those inputs recognized as adequate from the literature.

7 Wage for household’s members has been calculated as 2/3 of the wage for hired workers.

8 The four varieties of bananas considered are cooking, sweet, roasting, and beer banana.

Additional information

Funding

This work was funded by CGIAR: Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB).