Ripe for the picking? What does it take to transform a crop that is part of the agricultural and cultural landscape into an engine of economic development? In October, Stuart Price attended a gathering of thinkers and scientists in Mombasa, Kenya, that sought to find the answers.

For many people, the banana is more than just a fruit. Across Africa and indeed large swathes of Central America and Asia, the sweet dessert banana, starchy cooking varieties and plantain are the lifeblood of the people, as part of a regular, staple diet and source of income for hundreds of millions of people. Yet its potential is far from realised.

Take Uganda as an example. It produces 9.9m metric tonnes of bananas annually, accounting for 33% of the world's total production, making it the second-largest global producer after India. Yet the landlocked East African nation ranks only 70th in the index of world banana exporters.

In fact, the Great Lakes region of Central Africa consumes the largest quantity of bananas anywhere in the world. They are easily digestible, provide nourishing weaning for babies, and can be made into drinks, chips, flour additives and textiles.

Wider still, banana and plantain are basic food crops for over 70 million people in Africa. But yields have been declining over recent years. Nutrient deficiency in soils, disease and climate change all pose a threat to agricultural productivity in Africa. Bananas, however, have a degree of comparative advantage as a crop.

"A perennial plant with a relatively shallow root system, they help to prevent soil erosion and are very resilient," says Dr Fen Beed, plant pathologist and strategy chair of Banana 2008, the name given to a conference held outside the Kenyan city of Mombasa.

Organised by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and supported by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the pan-African conference was attended by over 400 delegates from across the continent and the fields of research, science and agriculture. The five-day meeting centred on the transformation of the banana into an economic driver for the well-being of Africans, increased food security, and sustainable development.

"Bananas will survive periods of drought, flood and civil conflict, continuing to provide stable food in harder times," continues Beed. In addition, the plant has local, regional and international market potential.

However, debilitating factors contribute to post-harvest losses of up to 40% in some cases, through damage, disease and poor transportation and handling. Global increases in fuel prices are likely also to pose difficulties for the banana's comparative advantages.

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So what can be done to realise the full potential of this fruit? "Through linking the diversity of expertise and intellect back to grassroot farmers, we want to initiate a process where all facets are interlinked to achieve sustainable development of the banana sector," says Beed. It is a grand and noble notion.

From the tropical surroundings of the five-day coastal retreat to a typical rural banana farmer growing enough produce to feed his family seems a very long way indeed. Yet the conference is the beginning of improving the lost of rural communities not necessarily a panacea.

"We are gathered here in an attempt to try and characterise what need to be done", Beed points out. At the moment, it is an ambitious attempt, but it provides an opportunity to lay down the guidelines for the way forward over the next 10 years. It is the beginning of a process that needs continual feedback, and requires trust between the policymakers, scientists and the farmers, who, says Beed, should be the ultimate beneficiaries, along with all the people involved with the supply chain.

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Speaking at the opening of the conference, Uganda's minister for tourism, trade and industry, Janet Mukwaya, said bananas were a potential source of economic prosperity for people, but that many were left to rot in the farms resulting in significant economic loss and potential food and nutritional insecurity.

Receiving a fair price for their product is also something that underpins the idea of farmers maximising their profits from their produce. The Highbridge Banana Growers & Marketing Association (HBGMA), an alliance of banana farmers in Kenya, aims to pool resources to market bananas and achieve a nationwide uniform price. In many parts of Kenya, bananas are sold by the bunch, but a Highbridge they have instead began to sell by the kilogram to introduce a uniform price.

Joshua Orina is the branch manager of the Kisii District in the Western Highlands in Kenya, overlooking the shores of Lake Victoria. "As it is now, a farmer can have a very big bunch of bananas," he says, pointing to a ripe and healthy looking bunch which, along with other samples of banana products, formed part of HBGMA's display stand at the conference. "The problem is that a middleman will give you very little if you have no other means to transport your produce to the market." This ultimately undercuts the farmer.

Orina further advocates the establishment of regional collection centres where bananas are weighed uniformly-without the peduncle, or stem which holds the bunch together--and everybody get a fair price for their produce. "At the moment," continues Orina, "it is the unscrupulous middlemen who make the most money from banana production, often to the detriment of framers.

The association has, however, and perhaps unsurprisingly, experienced a degree of resistance from the so-called middlemen, who stand to lose the most if a uniform price is introduced in Kenya. "What we want are standards to be set and farmers to benefit from their produce" interjects Kamau Njiba, HBGMA's chairman. "Let farmers be the major beneficiary," he adds, highlighting that a bunch of bananas can sell for around U$1.00 in the rural areas, but can be sold on for around five times as much in urban markets in Nairobi.

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That said, though, the growth of mobile telecommunications over recent years has also benefited farmers. Growers can now obtain up-to-date market prices for their produce via SMS text messaging in order to keep up with developments and movements that are influencing the markets. On a somewhat cautionary note, Richard Marsden of Bioversity International warned that there was already surplus supply of conventional bananas on the international market. In many countries in Africa, poor infrastructure leads to damaged produce during transportation, and, in many cases, disproportionate internal tariffs exist to undermine the financial gains that could be otherwise made by farmers.

"Another limiting factor," says Marsden, is that "farmers need to become better businessman in a better business-enabling environment and make the transition from basic food security for their families to operating in a profit and loss business climate." "At the moment," he continued, "there is little or no capital, no credit schemes and no insurance.

Internal tariffs in Sudan, for example, mean that it costs more to get produce to the coast for international export to Syria and Saudi Arabia than the actual production costs. Marsden compared this to the reality of exporting bananas from Peru, where the produce only has to travel 60Km along a well-maintained tarmac road to a modern port, where bananas are quickly and easily exported to the lucrative market of the west coasts of America.

For bananas, the big problem is perishability. Small-scale farmers could use post-harvest processing to develop products like flour or other food ingredients that could be stored for longer periods, particularly during times of seasonal glut, when prices are low.

But, as Dr Beed pointed out, this is just the beginning. "The future of bananas in Africa should move towards strengthening local and regional markets and market linkages that can feed the increasing urban populations, as well as taking advantage of value addition through processing, for products like banana chips, beer, fried snacks, flour, fibre, and other consumer goods," said Sidi Sanyang of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

"This will not happen without more intensive and deliberate efforts towards developing marketing strategies that will facilitate the consumption of these products. Next comes the mobilisation of resources; financial and technological, and human resource capital as well. It is the farmers who are at the centre of this drive for bananas to become more economically profitable to producers than they are at the moment," concluded Sanyang.

In the long term, it is farmers and their families who will, through increasing their production, ultimately increase their income.