ID Bio

With changing role of agricultural services, there is a growing focus on smallholder farmers to raise incomes by linking to various types of markets, including informal domestic and international markets and higher value markets. Only 15-20% of the global production goes for export and generates around US$12 billion per year. Senegal is known as the “Gateway to Africa” and presents good conditions for the cultivation of organic bananas with its 9,000 farmers. The demand for bananas in Senegal is close to 45-50,000 tons each year, whereas the production is only 36,000 tons per year. Europe imports more than 6.5 million tons of bananas per year, of which 700,000 comes from Africa. Until recently, producers were not strongly motivated to supply banana niche national markets as they were not sufficiently remunerative for bananas sold in “bulk.”