Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

722 Les productions bananières / Bananas and food security – Session 4
plantain are popular with small farmers for many reasons. They make good intercrops,
providing diversity and potential crop stability. Production begins after 12 months and
may last for up to 10 years, producing fruit the whole year round. They are healthy foods,
which can outyield most tropical crops under optimal conditions of soil, climate and
management. From a socio-economic viewpoint, banana and plantain are acceptable
crops to grow, eat and sell, and they can also provide reliable family income and job
opportunities.
The most important areas for examination in relation to intra-household decisionmaking
and resource control are (1) responsibility for day-to-day farm management, (2)
investment decisions in agricultural activities, and (3) choices about household
consumption of agricultural commodities. Just as different family members have
different paid and unpaid work responsibilities, so have they different rights and responsibilities
for decision-making and allocation of non-labour resources among household
enterprises. Sometimes these correspond to the labour allocation patterns or resource
endowments, but often they do not. Many decisions involve more than one family
member (McKee 1986).
The question therefore relates to the household decision-making role in backyard
banana and plantain production in Nsukka agro-ecological zone of Southeastern Nigeria.
What specific cultural operation(s) does a member of a rural household in Nsukka agroecological
zone of south-eastern Nigeria perform in backyard banana and plantain
production? Specifically, the study was designed to:
• determine banana and plantain production preference among Musa producers in the
study area;
• determine the primary reason(s) for backyard cultivation of banana and plantain in
the study area;
• determine the household decision-making role in backyard banana and plantain production
in the study area; and
• determine the adoption potentials of improved cultivars of banana and plantain
among Musa producers in the study area.
Methodology
Six out of seven Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the Zone were randomly selected
for the purpose of the study. From each of the six LGAs, three communities were
randomly selected, so that a total of 18 communities were involved in the study. From
each of the 18 communities, seven households who were involved in backyard banana
and plantain production were selected for the study. The head of each of the 126
(18 x 7) households was interviewed. The data were collected using a well-structured
interview form. Copies of the interview form were used by the researchers and trained
interviewers. Frequency distributions, percentages and mean scores were used in the
data analysis.