This Satellite Workshop focuses on two crops of the banana family: banana (Musaspp.) and enset (Ensete ventricosum). The workshop will investigate how Asian and African societies have adopted, expanded, and maintained livelihood systems based on these crops, and will compare the processes of creating banana and enset livelihood systems in various agro-ecological and socio-cultural settings.

Banana originated in Asia and eventually expanded to become an important crop in tropical regions. Enset, on the other hand, is limited mainly to the Ethiopian highlands, although wild enset grows in various parts of Asia and Africa. These crops share some common characteristics: both have a large herbaceous stem, are perennial, require a long maturation period, and demand extended and continuous management. Banana and enset can be harvested year round after a certain stage. Both also have large numbers of landraces with tremendous morphological variety.

In parts of the Great Lakes Region of East Africa (including Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, and the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo), and in the southwestern part of the Ethiopian highlands, banana and enset are both indispensable staple food crops and central to peoples’ lives. These crops are fundamental to subsistence economies, local customs, and agricultural landscapes. Therefore, our goal is not only to understand the importance of these crops in subsistence economies but also to examine the dynamics involved in creating banana and enset livelihood systems. We will investigate the roles of, and social constellations associated with, banana and enset as they relate to ecology, culture, politics, the economy, beliefs, and ritual practices. A comprehensive understanding of these factors should help us to identify specific characteristics of the societies that depend on banana and enset.

This workshop will compare the East African Lakes Region and southwest Ethiopian highlands, which are dominated, respectively, by landscapes of banana and enset, with the experiences and characteristics of banana-based areas in Asia. In this Workshop, we will first consider macro-level areas, in order to understand the processes by which banana and enset livelihood systems have been established and maintained. Next, we will focus on micro-level studies to examine the development of banana and enset fields by individual farmers, the maintenance of landrace diversity in fields, and the diverse varieties of crops in banana and enset fields. Finally, we will discuss these two levels from an interdisciplinary perspective encompassing the areas of ecological anthropology, social anthropology, agricultural economics, and genetic resources management and conservation.