(Fresh Plaza) The plantain production is in danger. Two years ago the floods in the regions where it is produced affected the plantations and, after the loss of production in the district of Baru and in the province of Bocas del Toro, consumer prices have had significant increases.
For Leonardo Marcelino, plantain project manager of the Agricultural Research Institute of Panama, that crop -like others- has a very dynamic marketing; however, with the passing of the years the activity has been displaced by the planting of oil palms.
According to Marcelino, currently there is a reduction in the cultivated areas, and even though the producers that have stayed in the business have applied technologies to compensate for the reduction and improve productivity, there are areas in the provinces of Veraguas and Chiriqui that have a plantain emergency.
The official detailed that the cost of producing one hectare of plantain is around $6.500 dollars, and generates a profit of $2.500 dollars, although everything varies according to the level of technology used by the producers, which, as indicated, should be offered a genetic material that can grow, and ensure high performance at lower cost.
New Project
Lilian Marquinez, Coordinator of the Fund for Agricultural Technology (Fontagro), said that currently a project is being developed in four Central American countries (Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Panama), to improve the farmers’ quality of life, by strengthening the production, agribusiness and marketing components.
Marquínez Panama specified that the investment for the project, which includes two stages, ranged at about $ 57.000 dollars, with specific studies of soil in the communities of Baru, Chiriqui Viejo and Quebrada de Arena.
Meanwhile, Miguel Dita, researcher of the international agency Bioversity, located in Costa Rica, argued that the project being developed will analyze the needed components in the management of diseases that attack the plantain plantations, mostly in the province of Chiriqui, area where the black sigatoca and other affectations have become the main enemies of the producers.
In the presentation of the final report of the Fontagro project, which seeks to improve the rural communities’ quality of life through technological innovations in the production and processing of the plantain, it was confirmed that there are approximately 8.600 producers for this category in Panama. Meanwhile in Chiriqui some 3,200 farmers expect the activity to improve, since, in the field, they only receive between 12 and 15 dollars for every hundred products even when the most productive areas are Chiriqui, Bocas del Toro and Darién.