Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

Amérique Latine - Caraïbes / Latin America - Caribbean : A. Gavilan et al.
farmer reserves for home consumption was given a value by multiplying the whole
production by the selling price of the crop. So we get the monetary value of each crop.
Dividing this amount by the value of the total production we got the relative monetary
income. The production of the patio (yard) and of some less important crops in the
value of the total production is not included. A problem we frequently had was that
producers did not remember how much they produced of crops like bananas and
plantains. They harvest some bunches and sell them. A month later there is a new
harvest. In the case of maize they harvest once. So it is easier to remember the whole
production. It is important to remark that these are not net incomes: production costs
are not subtracted.
We obtained the following results (Table 4): 49.1% of the farmers get 60-100% of their
agricultural income from maize. Rice has this same importance for 40% of the interviewed
farmers. Bananas and plantains are less important. 79% of the farmers get 5-50%
of their income from bananas and plantains. All the other food crops have less economic
importance for the farmers.
Cash crops are most important. Sesame has a relatively smaller importance for farmers
with cash crops than have soybean and cotton.
Table 3. Relative importance of other crops (percentage of farmers growing
the crop).
Fraction
of land
maize rice sorghum bean cassava sesame cotton soybean
0.05 2.4 0.0 11.7 24.4 29.0 2.8 0.0 0.0
0.10 9.8 17.2 42.2 37.8 52.1 17.0 0.0 19.6
0.20 11.0 24.0 15.4 12.2 7.8 8.6 0.0 0.0
0.30-0.40 18.2 31.1 15.4 12.2 7.8 31.3 0.0 19.6
0.40-1 46.2 24.7 11.3 12.2 3.9 34.1 100.0 58.8
1 6.0 3.4 3.7 0.0 0.0 5.6 0.0 0.0
>1 5.9 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
Table 4. Relative monetary importance of bananas and plantains and other crops
in the incomes of the farmers.
Fraction bananas maize rice sorghum bean cassava sesame cotton soybean
of and
income plantains
0.05-0.10 22.5 18.7 13.8 54.9 83.8 54.1 47.2 0.0 0.0
0.20-0.30 30.7 11.9 27.2 30.0 0.0 18.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.40-0.50 27.1 20.3 16.7 0.0 16.1 27.0 27.0 0.0 0.0
0.60-0.70 3.7 28.8 25.1 5.1 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0
0.80-1 15.3 20.3 12.5 10.3 0.0 0.0 15.7 100.0 100.0
761