Banana and Plantain Marketing in Enugu State, Nigeria.
ABSTRACT
The study was designed to analyze the marketing of banana and plantain in Enugu State. The specific objectives were to: describe the socio-economic characteristics of banana and plantain marketers; identify the marketing channels for the crops, examine the structure of the marketing system for both crops, estimate their marketing margins at both wholesale and retail levels, estimate the rate of price transmission and market integration among banana and plantain markets, and identify the constraints facing the marketing of both crops.
The study adopted survey research design. Multi-stage sampling technique was employed to compose a sample of 160 respondents (30 wholesalers and 50 retailers for banana, and 30 wholesalers and 50 retailers for plantain). Data for the study were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Time series data on retail prices of banana and plantain from 2007 to 2011 were obtained from Enugu State Agricultural Development Programme (ENADEP). Primary data were collected using structured questionnaire.
Data collected were analyzed using Gini coefficient, marketing margin analysis, Johansen co-integration test, Vector error correction model, and descriptive statistics. The result showed that majority of the respondents (87.50%) were females with average age of 35 years, 76.20% of them were married while 41.20% attained primary education. The mean scores for household size and marketing experience were seven and 13 years respectively. Also, 78.30% of the wholesalers obtained their products in heaps directly from producers while 21.70% bought from rural assemblers.
INTRODUCTION
Three out of every four people in developing countries live in rural areas; 2.1 billion people live on less than 2 US dollars a day and 880 million on less than 1 US dollar a day (Damme, 2009). Majority of these people considered poor depend on agriculture either directly or indirectly for their livelihoods. The 2008 World Development Report (WDR) stresses the important role agriculture can play in achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of reducing by halve the number of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger.
The 2008 WDR further draws attention to the fact that agriculture has unique features embedded in its ability to: function with other sectors as an economic activity for livelihoods, produce faster growth, reduce poverty and sustain the environment (Godoy and Dewbre, 2010). In agriculture-based economies, agriculture generates an average of 29% of the Gross Domestic Products (GDP) and employs 65% of the labour force (Damme, 2009).
In Nigerian economy, agriculture remains one of the largest sectors, where it plays an important role as food provider, employer of labour and foreign exchange earner, contributing about 40% of the GDP, broadly defined with crops accounting for 85%, livestock 19%, fisheries 4% and forestry 1%. Agriculture also employs about 77% of the working population and accounts for 70% contribution to GDP of the non-oil sector (Federal Republic of Nigeria, 2006; Mang, 2009).
However, Ayinde, Adewumi and Ojehomon, (2009) noted that the increase in farm output has not led to a corresponding increase in the earnings of the vast majority of farmers. One of the factors emphasized as being responsible for the imbalance is a poorly developed agricultural marketing system for major food staples, leading to high rate of spoilage, rising farm product prices and huge importation of food by government.
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StudentsandScholarship Team.