Farmers' willingness to pay for disease-screened and labeled clean banana planting materials in Uganda

One of the main reasons for the persistence and increased spread of banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) is that farmers keep using and recycling traditional infected planting materials. Use of disease-free, clean planting materials has been identified and promoted as one of the most effective means for the control of BXW. Despite its documented advantages, farmer adoption of the practice remains very low. One explanatory reason for the low adoption is that support toward improving farmer access to clean seed has hitherto been implemented without full knowledge of farmer seed demand characteristics. To develop a viable and sustainable commercial market for clean banana seed, it is important that farmers' willingness to pay for this seed is understood. To address this problem, the current study uses conjoint choice experiments, factor analysis, and price hedonic modeling to investigate farmers perceptions toward, and willingness to pay (WTP) for, disease-screened and labeled clean banana planting materials. The study also examines the factors that influence banana farmers' seed-purchasing behavior. Results show that farmers' perceptions toward clean banana planting materials (tissue-cultured bananas - TCB, and macro-propagated bananas - MPB) are mostly defined by their accessibility, superiority and productivity. Labeling and screening were found to effect a 4-fold increase in the proportion of farmers who were willing to pay for improved banana seed, which also resulted in an increased WTP price of approximately UGX 1,600 (US$ 0.47) per clean plantlet. However, the average WTP price for improved banana seed is less than the current market price for TCB, but higher than the market price for MBP. We find distance to input shops, the scale of banana production, disease incidence, land owned and perceptions about seed access to be the factors that influence the price that farmers are willing to pay for clean banana seed. The study results suggest that farmer demand and use of clean banana seed can be increased through enhancing clean seed accessibility, implementing disease-screening and labeling regimes, and employing price support mechanisms to seed producers and/or farmers. Further, MPBs offer a more viable and sustainable alternative for reducing BXW in the short run than TCBs.