1. Introduction
Plantain (Musaceae paradisiaca) is an important starchy fruit crop. It is ranked fourth world most important food crop after rice, wheat and maize grown in the Humid Tropics areas of the World such as Africa, Asia, Central and North America . Plantain production in Nigeria accounted for more than 50 percent of world production . Recent statistics on plantain production placed Nigeria (2,722,000 metric tonnes) at first position in Africa and fifth in the world. This is attributed to the fact that investment in plantain enterprise could alleviate rural poverty as well as ensure food security . This could be ascribed to the fact that plantain is a multipurpose crop with great processing potential.
Plantain has low saturated sugar (220 calories), sodium content, and minerals that are essential to human being when consumed raw. It is a good source of potassium, magnesium, phosphate, dietary fibre, and vitamins such as vitamin A, B6 and C that aid vision, good skin and immunity. Due to its high nutrients content, plantain can be used in the treatment of some ailments such as sore throats, tonsillitis, diarrhoea, vomiting, and kwashiorkor. The fresh juice from plantain trunk, fruit stalk and leaves are healing and soothing remedy to burns and anti-bleeding on wounds.
Apart from raw consumption, plantain could be processed into various value-added products such as flour, beverages, chips, juice, jams, soft drink depending on the maturity and ripeness of the plantain fruit. The immature fruits are peeled, sliced, dried, processed into powder and consumed as plantain flour. The mature fruits (ripe or unripe) are consumed boiled, steamed, baked, pounded, roasted, or sliced and fried into chips. Overripe plantains are processed into beer or spiced with chilli pepper, fried with palm oil and served as snacks popularly known as dodo-ikire. Also, plantain leaves are used for wrapping, packaging, marketing and serving of food. Apart from its usefulness to human being, it could be used as animal feeds for livestock’s and manure and mulching materials for plants.
In the light of foregoing, it is evident that plantain is a reliable source of revenue as well as raw material to agroindustries producing its value-added products. As a result, a lot of Nigerians invest huge amount of money into plantain enterprises to generate substantial income. Investment in plantain enterprise could be in form of cultivation, processing or/and marketing of plantain. Despite the huge capital invested into the enterprise, investors are not realising a reasonable profit that commensurate with their effort and level of investment. Also, PIND noted that marketers gain more than other actors in the value chain due to weak coordination along the value chain. This was often ascribed to some complex set of factors such as infestation of pest and diseases, poor management practices, poor road network and lack of storage facility, and short storage life. Since all investors invest huge capital in plantain value chain, it becomes imperative to investigate the returns to each investor along the value chain. Consequently, this paper investigates profitability of investment in plantain value chain in Osun State, Nigeria. Specifically, describes the socio-economic characteristics of the plantain investors, determines the profitability of investors in plantain value chain, and determines the factors affecting the profitability of investors in plantain value chain.
2. Metholody
2.1. Study Area
This study was carried out in Osun State, Southwestern part of Nigeria. The State lies within latitudes 6° and 7°N of the equator and approximately between longitudes 4° and 5°E of Greenwich meridian. It is one of the land- locked states of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, bounded in the West of Oyo State, in the East by Ondo State, in the North by Kwara State and in the south by Ogun State. It covers an estimated area of 9251 square kilometre. The predominant occupation of the State is farming. The crops grown include yam, cassava, maize, rice, cowpea, and perennial crops such as cocoa, kolanuts, plantain, and oil palm.
2.2. Sampling Procedure
Multistage sampling procedure was used to obtain data for the study. The first stage involved purposive selection of three local Government Area (LGAs) based on the volume of plantain production in the areas. The LGAs include Atakumosa west, Irewole and Ife central. The second stage involved random sampling of three villages in each LGAs. The third stage involved random selection of thirty plantain farmers, thirty-two processors with thirty-eight marketers from the villages. An individual was considered to be a plantain farmer and marketer if he engages in planting and marketing of plantain, respectively. A processor, if the individual is involved in “dodo Ikire”, plantain chip, plantain flour and roasted plantain. A total of one hundred plantain investors were used for this study.
"to be continued in the next part"