Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

Afrique / Africa: M. Tshiunza et al.
the 24 cooking banana traders were female with an average experience in trading of five
years on cooking banana and eight years on plantain.
The purchase price of a medium bunch of cooking banana in the rural market place
ranged from N20 (N = Naira – 1US$ = 95.5 N, October 1999) to N100 with a mean of
N61.1. The smallest and biggest bunches of cooking banana were purchased at an
average price of N31.7 and N96.7 respectively (Table 6). On the other hand, the purchase
price of an average bunch of plantain ranged from N50 to N200 with a mean of N100.0
per bunch. The smallest and biggest bunches of plantain were purchased at an average
price of N62.7 and N185.9 respectively. These results indicate that, on the average,
cooking banana sells at approximately half the price of plantain in the rural markets.
Traders transport their cooking banana to other rural or urban markets and sell them
mostly to consumers, retailers and to some extent to processors. The resale price of a
medium bunch of cooking banana by traders ranges from N20 to N150 with a mean of
N87.05. The smallest and biggest bunches of plantain were sold at an average prices of
N52.7 and N 133 respectively. The resale price of a medium bunch of plantain ranges
from N60 to N225 with a mean of N138.3. The smallest and bunches of plantain were sold
at an average price of N93.4 and N230.7, respectively (Table 7).
The gross marketing margins of cooking banana and plantain are presented in
Table 8. On average, a bunch of plantain sells only N10 higher than cooking banana.
However, one Naira invested in buying cooking banana yields a higher gross marketing
margin than when invested in plantain.
Further investigations showed that the weight of a cooking banana bunch ranged
from 5.6 kg to 38.0 kg with a mean of 16.35 kg (Table 9). The corresponding prices
ranged from N2.2 to N16.1 per kg with a mean of N6.5 per kg. For plantain (Agbagba),
the bunch weight ranged from 4.2 kg to 20.8 kg with a mean of 10.1 kg. The
corresponding prices ranged from N6.00 per kg to 24.2 per kg with a mean of N13.3 per
kg. These results confirm, once again, that the market value of cooking banana is about
half of that of plantain. Akalumhe (1994) found that the average weight of a bunch of
Bluggoe had an average weight of 19.1 kg and sold at N1.8 per kg while the average
bunch weight of Agbagba was 6.18 kg and sold at N8.9 per kg.
Table 7. Selling price of cooking banana and plantain bunches by size.
Size of bunch Mean Range Standard Number of
Small
deviation observations
cooking banana 52.7 10-100 22.7 22
plantain
Medium
93.4 20-150 37.0 22
cooking banana 87.1 20-150 36.6 22
plantain
Big
138.3 60-225 48.4 20
cooking banana 133.0 55-250 52.7 23
plantain 230.7 110-350 67.4 22
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