Effectiveness of learning and experimentation approaches for farmers as a community based strategy for banana xanthomonas wilt management

Banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is a devastating disease for banana and enset in east, central and Horn of Africa since 1968. The disease has spread to all banana growing countries in the region in the last decade, causing yield losses of up to 80 to 100%. Several efforts have been undertaken to develop and implement technologies for BXW management and their effective deployment with varying successes. This paper presents a new participatory approach for managing BXW named Learning and Experimentation Approaches For Farmers (LEAFF) and describes how it was implemented, tested and evaluated among 220 farmers across two agroecological regions, central and South-western Uganda. Results showed that there was a general reduction in the number of infected plants, corresponding to 7% increase in productivity of banana among the LEAFF compared to the non LEAFF participating farmers. The findings suggested that scaling out LEAFF to different parts in the region can significantly contribute to effective and sustainable adoption of BXW management technologies, and in turn, can lead to improved productivity and smallholder farmers’ livelihoods

This Is What We Know: Working from the Margins in Child Welfare

This study investigates the work processes of racialized child welfare workers within hierarchical institutions and involves an understanding of several day-to-day child welfare activities such as case decisions, work training, court attendance, and work with families, as well as supervisors, co-workers and collaterals. While practicing, workers negotiate the power dimensions within the different and pre-determined work relations involving supervisors, colleagues, collaterals, families and children. The negotiating of power relations is complex and includes experiences of racial tension which are incorporated in the analysis. As the participants were both men and women with some workers being immigrants who had their own personal experiences of poverty, the analysis also recognizes the complexities of both gender and class. Part of the negotiation by the participants relates to addressing the tension that arises when their cultural values conflict with existing policies and laws, as well as institutional hierarchies. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s ideas of power, knowledge and the subject, this study analyzes the forms and uses of power through systems of differentiation, surveillance and hierarchical structures which provide a unique, relevant and applicable theoretical background to the understanding of race, gender, and class. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, an approach that allows for an exploration and understanding of the work experiences of racialized workers. The stories of the twenty-one participants involved in this research are significant and profound, and warrant attention. The study concludes that issues of race, gender and class alter perceptions and practice with families and thus calls for the integration of alternative ways of knowing within the dominant child welfare knowledge to better serve families and address experiences of tension by racialized child welfare workers

Workshop report: PMCA final event. Reducing postharvest losses and promoting product differentiation in the cooking banana value chain

As part of the ENDURE project exit strategy, and in line with the Participatory Market Chain Approach (PMCA) adopted by the project, a two days project’s final event was organized at Zebra hotel in Masaka on 25-26 November, 2016 whose objectives were: To share research findings of the project activities with a wider audience and To exhibit and launch the successful innovations to the market

Technical report: Cost-benefit analysis of cooking banana seed propagation methods

European UnionInternational Fund for Agricultural Developmen

Banana tissue culture: community nurseries for African farmers

This project was carried out in three countries— Kenya, Uganda, and Burundi—to get disease-free, TC banana plantlets to farmers. Private companies were already producing TC banana plantlets, but there was no channel to distribute them to farmers. The project established community nurseries to receive the in vitro-plantlets, wean them, and harden them (i.e. grow them outside of the flask until the plantlets are big and strong enough to be transplanted to farmers’ fields). Eleven new community nurseries were established in Uganda and Kenya to buy the in-vitro plants, harden them, and sell them to farmers. The most successful community nurseries were the ones near their source of TC plantlets and near their farmer customers. About 1,000 farmers were trained to transplant TC bananas to the field and care for them. Although the banana plants are disease free when removed from the flask, they are not disease resistant, and can become infected. The plantlets need extra care when transplanted (e.g. more water and fertilizer). TC was profitable for farmers who were near an urban market, which allowed them to earn higher prices for their harvested bananas. On the other hand, TC plantlets were not profitable for remote farmers

On the introduction of genetically modified bananas in Uganda: social benefits, costs, and consumer preferences

Agriculture is the mainstay for the great majority of rural people in most African countries and is essential for poverty reduction and food security. The role of agriculture towards poverty reduction, however, has not been realized in Africa, despite advances in development of technologies such as improved varieties suitable to local conditions and resistant to pests, diseases and droughts stresses. Plant breeding using modern biotechnology and genetic modification in particular has the potential of speeding-up crop improvement. However, the central issue in agricultural biotechnology particularly in Africa is to achieve a functional biosafety system to ensure that a country has the capacity to assess risks that may be associated with modern biotechnology. Several countries have designed and implemented policies to address the safety concerns of consumers and producers, including environment and food safety. One of the requirements, as proposed in Article 2 of the Cartagena Protocol, is the inclusion of socioeconomic considerations in the biosafety assessment process. Many developing countries, including Uganda, have not determined whether and how to include socioeconomic considerations. Specifically, at what stage of the regulatory process should they be included, the involved scope, as well as the nature of the decision-making process within the biosafety regulations. The aim of my thesis is to examine potential social welfare impacts of introducing a GM banana in order to illustrate the relevance of socioeconomic analyses for supporting biotechnology decision-making and in particular the importance of consumer perceptions but also for contributing to the development and implementation of biosafety regulations. I present a general approach using GM banana as an example, while assuming the GM banana has passed standard food and biosafety safety assessments, i.e. can be considered to be safe. I explore the benefit-cost trade-offs of its introduction and the farmers’ and consumers’ willingness to pay for the technology and the end product. In the study I present a framework for considering concerns about genetically modified crops within a socioeconomic analysis of GM crops, using real options and choice experiment approaches. The approaches relate the economic benefits to consumers’ concerns. The results show that the introduction of GM bananas would be desirable for the Ugandan society as a whole, mainly benefit poor rural households and would merit policy support. Nevertheless, if such a GM banana is introduced its introduction may result in strong opposition from the opponent segment of the population, which is composed of mainly urban consumers with an on average higher education and income. Interestingly and in contradiction to common wisdom only providing additional information about the technology and its safety will not result in higher acceptance. Based on this case study biosafety regulators would need to consider these socioeconomic effects before a decision to introduce a GM banana is made. However, the decision to consider socioeconomic impacts for other GM crops elsewhere depends on the crop and the country. The research methodology in this thesis provides the basis for assessing other GM crops as well. <br/

A latent class approach to investigating consumer demand for genetically modified staple food in a developing country: The case of GM bananas in Uganda

genetically modified bananas, Consumers, Choice experiment, latent class model, preference heterogeneity, Science and technology, Genetic resources, Genetically engineered crops, Genetically modified crops,