Bananas and Food Security - Bioversity International

Amérique Latine - Caraïbes / Latin America - Caribbean : A. Gavilan et al.
a car. Farmers with more land had more access to transport than others. There is not a
strong correlation between these two variables.
Use of fertiliser
Thirty-five percent of the farmers of class 1 used more than 130 kg/ha urea- fertiliser. In
class 2 and 4.54% did so, together with 78% of class 3 and all the big farmers of class 5.
70% of the farmers of class 1 used more than 100 kg/ha of NPK-fertiliser. In classes 2, 3, 4
and 5, 42, 85, 73 and 100% did so respectively. Only 5% of the farmers we interviewed
used ammonium sulphate to fertilise their crops. Farmers with more land apply more
fertiliser, but here is no linear correlation between these two variables.
Use of pesticides
The use of insecticides is similar in the different classes (Table 9). Farmers with more
land apply more herbicides and fungicides than farmers with less. The use of herbicides
to control weeds is an additional cost. For the smaller farmers it is cheaper to control
weeds mechanically than to apply herbicides.
Conclusions
A farmer with more land generally has more resources. But there is no linear correlation
between the studied variables. Further investigation is needed.
Other economic activities
More than 34% of the farmers have another occupation (Table 10), 20.8% do unpaid work,
7.3 have a small business. Only 2.1% work as craftsmenhas an artesanal activity. More
than 5% are engaged in raising shrimps. It is mainly the smaller farmers who have
another source of income. Half of the farmers of class 1 and a third of those in class 2
have another activity, usually unpaid.
Table 9. Percentage of farmers using pesticides by farm size.
class 1 class 2 class 3 class 4 class 5 total
Herbicide 43.8 57.1 78.6 73.3 100.0 59.2
Insecticide 68.8 88.6 64.3 73.3 100.0 76.5
Fungicide 18.8 48.6 64.3 66.7 100.0 44.9
Table 10. Number of farmers with another economic activity (%).
Other economic activities class 1 class 2 class 3 class 4 total
None 53.1 65.7 78.6 73.3 64.6
Unpaid worker 25.0 28.6 7.1 6.7 20.8
Business 12.5 2.9 7.1 6.7 7.3
Craftsman 0.0 2.9 0.0 6.7 2.1
Other 9.4 0.0 7.1 6.7 5.2
767