Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

492 Les productions bananières / Bananas and food security – Session 3
buying cooking banana in bulk (wholesalers) as well as processors constituted the third
and last category of cooking banana buyers. They were mentionned by 31 and 30 farmers
respectively. Wholesalers were ranked first by 27 out of 31 farmers (i.e. 90%) that sold to
them whereas porcessors were ranked first and second by 19 and 10 farmers
respectively. Most of the traders buying cooking banana from the farmers were women
(Figure 1); they were predominant as both retailers and wholesalers. All processors were
exclusively women.
Relative market prices of cooking banana and plantain
Cooking banana was sold in all the six markets visited. On the average, there were
12 cooking banana sellers in each market visited (Table 5). They were farmers who had
brought their cooking banana produce to the market. Akalumhe (1994) found cooking
banana in only two out of seven rural markets he investigated in Southeast Nigeria, six
years after their introduction. However, only 24 cooking banana traders could be
identified, i.e., an average of four traders per market. A great number of sellers
(farmers) and a few number of buyers (oligopolistic market) therefore characterise the
cooking banana market. The average number of bunches bought per market day varied
from two to ten with an average of 4.5 bunches per trader (Table 5). Twenty-three out of
Table 5. Average number of farmers selling cooking banana per market and cooking
banana bunches bought per trader.
Statistics Number of farmers Number of bunches
Mean 12.0 4.5
Maximum 20.0 10.0
Minimum 2.0 2.0
Standard deviation 5.2 3.1
Number of observations 24.0 21.0
Table 6. Purchase price of cooking banana and plantain bunches by size.
Size of bunch Mean Range Standard Number
Small
deviation of observations
cooking banana 31.7 10-50 13.0 23
plantain
Medium
62.7 20-100 23.1 21
cooking banana 61.6 20-100 25.6 22
plantain
Big
100.0 50-200 35.9 21
cooking banana 96.7 40-200 45.6 23
plantain 185.9 100-350 56.4 22