Does gender matter in effective management of plant disease epidemics? Insights from a survey among rural banana farming households in Uganda

Abstract

Crop diseases significantly suppress plant yields and in extreme cases wipe out entire crop species threatening food security and eroding rural livelihoods. It is therefore critical to estimate the extent to which shocks like disease epidemics can affect food availability and the capacity of smallholder farmers to mitigate and reverse the effects of such shocks. This study utilizes sex-disaggregated data from 341 households in Uganda to analyze: first, gender and access to agricultural resources and their control; second, whether men and women in the targeted banana-farming communities share similar perceptions toward the effectiveness of the banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) control technologies and their respective information dissemination pathways; third, whether gender and farmer perceptions influence on farm adoption of BXW management practices. Lastly, it determines the impact of adoption of BXW control practices on food security. Results show that whereas most household assets are jointly owned, men have more individual ownership, control, and decision-making on income from household assets than women. Perceptions on effectiveness of BXW control practices and communication channels also differed between men and women. Men rated cutting down of infected plants to be more effective than women, but tissue culture, removal of male buds and disinfecting of farm tools were perceived to be equally effective by both men and women. In addition, apart from newspapers which were more effective in delivering BXW information to men, we found no differences in the effectiveness of other BXW information sources. More importantly, the study finds both gender and farmer perceptions on BXW control to significantly affect adoption of BXW control practices and household food security. For better and sustainable management of plant epidemics in Uganda, it is therefore critical that existing gender-based and underlying perception constraints are addressed.

Has Continued Exposure to Banana Xanthomonas Wilt Worsened Farmers’ Welfare Over Time? Evidence From Banana-Producing Households in Uganda

“…Female-headed households ventured more into these activities as a coping mechanism than the male-headed households. These results concur with Kikulwe, Okurut, Ajambo, Gotor, et al (2018) who asserted that female-headed households have limited resource endowments to enable them cope with shocks like BXW outbreaks therefore they may opt for income generating activities off-farm as a coping strategy.…”

Benefits from the adoption of genetically engineered innovations in the Ugandan banana and cassava sectors: An ex ante analysis

“…Yet, a district disaggregation of explanatory factors was significant, showing potential constraints for females to banana variety adoption. Kikulwe et al (2018) show that gender and farmer perceptions about BXW are critical in explaining adoption of BXW control practices and for household food security. Addressing such perceptions in R&D and technology development processes is therefore critical reduce the gender gap in the adoption of new varieties and thus improve food security.…”

“…Our estimates are based on secondary data and quite thin -even heroic-assumptions about differences in genderbased performance. We conducted a limited exercise using the Real Options model for the case of bananas only, for which there is some available data (Bagamba et al 2007;Albertson, 2016;Kikulwe et al, 2018).…”

“…These estimates do not consider potential difference in the cost structure between female and male farmers, nor of any binding constraints that female farmers face especially for access to assets and other issues described in the introductory narrative. Nevertheless, these estimates in practice identify an urgent need to invest resources into efforts to gather proper gender sensitive data that will allow accurate and robust gender-disaggregated adoption impacts, but most importantly address the gender gaps and disparities described in Kikulwe et al (2018) and Bagamba et al (2007).…”