Public and private investments for banana Xanthomonas Wilt control in Uganda: The economic feasibility for smallholder farmers

Abstract

Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW) poses a serious threat to livelihoods and food security for millions of households in Africa. Despite considerable investments in Uganda by the Government and other national and international stakeholders, the disease persists in the country after periods of significant resurgence. Building on the Agricultural Innovation Systems framework, this paper reviews the role of the major stakeholders involved in controlling the disease in Uganda. Next, using household survey data, it analyzes economic costs and benefits of adopting an integrated BXW control package for the Ugandan smallholder farmers. After 2015, there has been a significant reduction in both public and private investments in BXW management, which may contribute to future disease resurgence. Our analysis reveals a high level of partial adoption of BXW recommended practices, and just a third of farmers adopting a full control package. This means significant economic losses for nonadopters, as indicated by our findings that households adopting the full package registered a net balance of US$65 per acre higher than non-adopters. We find that disproportionally large costs need to be borne at the beginning of the process, while the benefits are distributed over time, which may present a barrier to adoption by resource-poor smallholders.

Livelihood assets’ influence on Ugandan farmers’ control practices for Banana Xanthomonas Wilt (BXW)

“…Replanting using clean planting material, in the form of tissue-culture plantlets or macro-propagated plantlets, was by far the least adopted practice, with just 1% of the sample employing this strategy. Previous studies (e.g., Gotor et al 2020;Jogo et al 2013;Kikulwe et al 2019) tend to exclude this practice from the analysis precisely because it represents such low levels. The use of clean planting material is considered optional compared to the other practices recommended in the integrated BXW control package, because it is only required if the rural household decides to replant banana, which is not always the case.…”

The potential impact of banana Xanthomonas wilt on food systems in Africa: modeling scenarios of policy response and disease control measures

“…As shown with the Q&E scenario of stakeholder response to BXW, the impacts of the disease in SSA can be almost fully mitigated by proactively raising awareness and knowledge on disease diagnosis, transmission, and promoting the adoption of the appropriate management practices by farmers (Ocimati et al, 2019). For this purpose, communication and education campaigns, trainings, and meetings are needed (Gotor et al, 2020). Avoiding the disease transmission to the new territories must be prevented by coordinated actions at the regional level.…”

The contestations of diversity, culture and commercialization: why tissue culture technology alone cannot solve the banana Xanthomonas wilt problem in central Uganda

“…Over the past 16 years, various research and extension efforts at global, national and local echelons have converged to manage and contain the disease (Ocimati et al 2019;Gotor et al 2020). Epidemiology studies of BXW (e.g., see Blomme et al 2005Blomme et al , 2017Kubiriba et al 2012;Nakato et al 2015;Ocimati et al 2015) informed control strategies including farmers sensitization and development and enforcement of bylaws for control of the disease (Kubiriba et al 2012;Blomme et al 2014).…”