Doing banana farming as a business

Banana growing is a highly profitable venture, whether you have chosen to grow cooking bananas, dessert bananas such as bogoya, sukalindizi or roasting bananas such as gonja, you will be assured of harvesting money.
Based on 2013 Naads studies, properly planned high-input banana cultivation is the most profitable agribusiness venture in Uganda.

Here is a look at the cost-benefit of banana cultivation as a business. Planning begins before choosing a site for the plantation and decision on varieties to plant.
If you are a small scale-farmer (0.5-2 acres), plan with other banana farmers to do some things together and at the same time, such as buying inputs, planting, harvesting, marketing. This will reduce some of the costs.
However, it you have sufficient capital, you can go it alone and your neighbors learn from you.
Let us assume you are going it alone. You are setting up an acre of bananas and for the first year of planting—there are the cooking bananas (Mpologoma, Nakitembe, Mbwazirume, Kibuzi or Kisansa).

These are the initial investment costs: Input costs that will include costs of securing 450 tissue culture plantlets (Shs900,000), fertilisers (Shs262,000), animal manure (Shs630,000), support poles (Shs271,000), mulch and mulching (Shs650,000), herbicides (Shs200,000). These will total up to Shs2,913,000. Note that these are estimates, and may vary slightly depending on a number of factors.

The labour costs include first ploughing (Shs120,000), second ploughing (Shs120,000), digging holes (Shs225,000), planting (Shs56,250), weeding (Shs125,000), application of manure (Shs65,000), desuckering and deleaffing (Shs45,000) mulching (use cover crop such as beans in first and second season, then apply mulch after). These will total up to Shs756,250.
Total variable costs will therefore be those for inputs and labour, which will sum up to Shs3,749,250. Again, note that these are estimates based on experience and may vary slightly from farmer and from farm to farm.

First harvest
By end of the first year, your tissue culture plants will have fruited and ready for harvesting or will be midway of maturity process depending on the variety you will have planted.
Let us assume that they will be ready for harvesting (as 12 months is the average for most cooking bananas), and that you harvest 450 bunches of good size and they will be sold at an average figure of Shs12,000 per bunch (farm gate), you will generate Shs5,400,000 at this first harvest, implying a profit of Shs1,730,750 per acre at the first harvest.

Note that the price quoted here may be an underestimate depending on your location with respect to the market, and the demand at the time of harvesting.
Rarely can a big bunch (bigger than 20kg) of bananas fall to below this price at farm gate. The more acres you have, the more money you make.
However, note that for bananas, the first year is the year of high costs.

If good work is done then, the variable costs will nose-dive to very minimal costs in the second and subsequent years to minimal maintenance costs as the yield triples in these years.
The minimal maintenance costs include costs of topping the mulch, pruning, that is, desuckering and deleafing, chopping stems and corms, and minimal weeding as well as adding manure or fertilisers, and insect pest management.

Subsequent years
Let us consider the second year for example. If mulching had been done well during the first year, you may need to top up the mulch at minimal cost of about Shs150,000 per acre.
If mulching is well done, weeding will be at almost no cost, we can put Shs50,000 per acre for weeding.
Desuckering and deleafing will be higher since more suckers and leaves will be coming up, so the cost can go higher to about Shs255,000 including costs of removing and chopping the pseudostems and corms.
Other costs may include general labour and maintenance costs which can be put at about Shs150,000 per acre.
This brings the total variable costs to Shs605,000 in the second year. On the other hand, there is expected to be an average three harvests of bunches per banana stool per year.

This implies that if you harvested the first bunches in December, the daughter plants will give you bunches in April or May, the grand daughter in July or August and the grand daughter in November-December of the following year.
From the 450 initial mats, you will be able to get 1,350 bunches. Let us be conservative and assume that may be you even get an average of two bunches per stool per year of good size, this will still be 900 bunches.
If you sell at the same farm gate price as the previous year Shs12,000 per bunch, you earn Shs10.8m less our minimal total variable costs of Shs605,000 per acre. The net profit in the second year will jump to Shs10,150,000 per acre.

Dessert bananas
We have looked at cooking bananas, however, the profit margins are even higher for dessert bananas such as bogoya and sukalindizi and roasting bananas such as gonja.
There are also some challenges in cultivation and maintenance of these varieties ranging from low growth rates and susceptibility to diseases and pests.
For that one will need to consult and understand about them as much as possible, as they vary from one region to another.

We have also assumed growing for local market but we have many farmers that are growing for export market, and they are making very good money.
All these are options one should explore as he/she enters this business venture.
I am sure that people will ask, why invest heavily at the beginning buying good quality disease-free tissue culture seedlings, manure, DAP fertilisers, mulching, herbicides?

The choice is up to you, if you choose a low input approach, you may need not to spend all that much but again if your yields or sizes of bunches are not a good size do not blame anybody.
As they always say, cheap things are always costly in the long run.

Take note

With the returns, you will be enticed to expand the banana plantation. The more acres you have, the more returns you will register in net profit.
You can also choose to start big; not on one acre but a number of acres.
However, like any other business, do not start too big as you may be overwhelmed by challenges.
Start reasonably small—one to three acres is ideal for one to learn lessons, confront challenges, perfect the system, build a cadreship of committed workers, and then after a year or two consider expansion. Never sell your bananas at a giveaway price.
The demand for bananas is constant all the year through both in and out of the country. You only need to deal with the right buyers not exploiters.

The writer is chief executive officer,
NSIGOTECH Tissue Culture Laboratory.
[email protected]