Life Behind Banana Peeling: A Story To Tell

A Qualitative Research
Presented to the Thesis committee of
Santo Tomas College of Agriculture Sciences and Technology
Santo Tomas, Davao Del Norte

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the

course
Bachelor of Public Administration

by

EUGENE AQUINO
ANA VIDAD

2022
 INTRODUCTION

Bananas are grown in all tropical regions and play a key role in the

economies of many developing countries. in terms of gross value of

production, bananas are the world’s fourth most important food crop after rice,

wheat and maize. They are a staple food and an export commodity. As a

staple, bananas (including plantains and other types of cooking bananas)

contribute to the food security of millions of people in much of the developing

world, and when traded in local markets they provide income and employment

to rural population (Pedro Arias, 2003).

In Malaysia, as banana is a highly consumed fruit, a lot of

entrepreneurs are making variety of banana by-products. One of the famous

by-products is banana chips. Banana chips are one of the products made for

mass production. Banana chips processing, the peeling process is still being

done using manual hand peeling method which is by using their own hand

and knife as a tool to separate the peel (Farahana Nabilah Zainal A’bidin et

al., 2019).

Meanwhile, in the Philippines. Class C Cavendish Bananas or Musa

cavendischii though are mostly deemed worthless, can be processed into

food-grade banana flour. This can be done through dehydration and

pulverization. Some institutions have been doing this but lacks the efficiency

of automated technology for they have been making use of manual

dehydration processes like sun drying & household oven drying, resulting into
massive longevity of banana flour processing. (Gamaliel Eve R. Minggong et

al., 2020)

In Barangay Kimamon, Santo.Tomas, Davao del Norte. Sto. Tomas

has a number of multi-national corporations and cooperatives engaged in

banana production and exportation. It has 19 Barangays where in Barangay

Kimamon belongs. In Barangay Kimamon banana peeling is popular job

cause by poverty, low education and unemployment but peeling banana can

give employment to them and can provide their basic needs. Although banana

peeling is a hard job because it using manual processing it cause time and

hardship.

(Research GAP)

In this study we need to conduct qualitative research that will

thoroughly examine and describe the experiences, coping mechanisms,
motivations and discover insights that might be useful in dealing with the
situation. The result of this study may help the banana peelers to cope up with
the challenges in their lives and how banana peeling provides their basic
needs day-by-day. Also the society to accept this dignified job and stop
discrimination on the banana peelers. Numerous studies were conducted with
the same topic, However mostly focused on peeler machines and also
conducted in quantitative. The study to be conducted will be using qualitative
approach specifically the narrative type in order to better understand how the
experiences of banana peeling.

Purpose of the Study

 The purpose of this study is to know the stories behind banana peeling.

I hope that this study will be beneficial to the banana peelers, community,

Future researcher.

Banana Peelers. They may also benefit of this study through income

that can provide their basic needs and cope up with the challenges.

Community. They may also benefit in this study through giving them

insight how dignified work it is and also it stop discriminating the banana

peelers.

Future Researchers. They may also benefit in this study through giving

them reference data in conducting new research.

Research Questions

This study tries to know the lived experiences of banana peelers.

Specifically, this study aims to answer the following questions:

1. What are the experiences of banana peelers?

1.1 What are the reasons you choose this kind of work?

1.2 What are the experiences that you can’t forget as banana peelers?

1.3 What challenges you most in banana peelers?

2. How do banana peelers cope up with the experiences encountered?

2.1 As a banana peelers, how do you deal with your family expenses?

2.2 How do you face all the judgment of other people about your work?
2.3 In times when illness strike you, did you continue banana peeling? How

did you manage to do so?

3. What are the insights they can share to their peers?

3.1 What is the significance of banana peeling in the community?

3.2 How important is the banana peeling for you family?

3.3 what views can you share to others about banana peeling?

Review of Related Literature

Banana

Banana is a tropical plant that grows in the warm, humid and rainy

climate of tropical regions on both sides of the equator. Heavy rain fall and

constantly high temperature are ideal for banana cultivation.Bananas are not

seasonal fruits and are available in plenty through out the year. Being highly

perishable, around 30 % of the total production of banana goes waste from

the time of harvesting till they reach the consumers. Hence it is necessary to

save them from the sizeable amount of losses. Plantains have great potential

for value addition and diversification to give a boost to food industry, create

employment opportunities and give better returns to the farmers. The various

processed products of banana are banana figs, banana flour, starch, stem

candy, powder, chips and fermented products like brandy, beer and ethanol.

Some of these products, their uses and methods of preparation are described

below (KB Aswathi, Indulekshmi , 2010).

 According to Kayat Fa et al., (2016) Bananas are among the main

tropical fruit that grows largely in Asia, Latin America and Africa. Smallholders

are the prime groups involved directly in growing bananas. Based on the

volume of production, bananas come fourth after rice, wheat and maize. More

than 100 million ton of bananas are produced every year in over ten million

hectares. About 13 % of the world's banana production is exported while the

remaining 87% is for local consumption.

Banana is a locally-grown fruit in the Philippines that is available in the

market year-round. It is a very abundant agricultural produce such that in

2019, the Philippines ranked second in terms of world export, next to

Ecuador(FAO, 2020). One of its most popular varieties is the “Saba” (Musa

BBB “Saba” (Musa acuminata x Musa balbisiana)) cultivar, whose stem can

attain a height of four meters. Simultaneously, its bunches can have 8 to 16

hands having 12 to 20 fingers per hand. The fruits are short, stubby, and

highly angular with thick green peels when unripe and yellow peel when ripe.

The pulp is creamy white, fine-textured with well-developed cores and

occasional seeds. The “Saba” cultivar is usually consumed fresh in its ripened

state and processed to provide variety to the food product (Joel P.

Rivadeneira et al., 2020)

According to Rosanna C. Ucat, Jennifer C. Dela Cruz, (2019) The

Philippines, particularly Mindanao, is known for its wide lands of Cavendish

Banana cultivar which is predominantly used for exportation. As of 2017, a

254, 610.16 hectares of land area are used for banana cultivars only, and

51.7% of these banana cultivars are accounted for Cavendish Bananas.

Banana (Musa spp.) cultivation is exclusively tropical (Lassoudière,

2007). Cooked bananas are important portion of food intake for populations in

production areas. The dessert banana has a global distribution. Considering

the nutrition aspect, it is the world's leading fruit crop, and in terms of

economical value it is the number five agricultural crop in world trade(Guylène

et al., 2009)

Banana Peeling

Peeling is the first unit operation to be carried out for processing of

banana. It involves the removal of outer skin of the fruit. In India, peeling is

performed manually with stainless steel scouring knives. The shape of the

plantain is awkward to peel with a knife and lead to cuts on the fingers if the

knife slips. Also, if excessive pressure is applied to the plantain while holding

it steady for peeling, the edible portion can become bruised. Thus, it should

be performed carefully. Different methods developed for peeling fruits and

vegetables.It is usually done manually by women using special knives. The

peel is cut longitudinally and transversely to a depth corresponding to the

thickness of the peel, which can then be easily removed. This method

requires minimum investment and no enzyme stimulation as in the case of

heat and lye peeling methods. Major disadvantages are high labour cost and

chances of contamination with micro organisms. The rate and quality of

operation depends on experience and the efficiency of operation varies from

person to person (KB Aswathi, Indulekshmi , 2010)

According to Kushal Dhake et al., (2019), Steaming the bananas

before peeling eases the peeling operation, reduces discoloration, retains

more tannin but requires longer drying time. Fruits are hand peeled or

machine peeled and sliced or chopped into pieces about 5- 10 mm thick. The

slices will be dried by spreading in the open sun. Banana flour is important

raw material for the baking and confectionery industry. Green Banana is a

versatile fruit that can be a staple food and cannot be eaten as raw but can be

processed to a range of products such as chips, powder, peel juice,

dehydrated green banana chips. Some of the novel technologies are being

applied in the processing of various food products which have earlier been

limited to meat or dairy products. The use of green banana processing is

having the ability to give employment to the rural peoples where banana

production is high. It will reduce the losses and increase rural economy.

Peeling and slicing of green mature plantains of Nendran variety is labour

intensive and costly(Gourikutty Kunjurayan Rajesh et al., 2016).

KB Aswathi, Indulekshmi, (2010) Stated that peeling and slicing of the

well matured unripe plantain is a difficult operation for an unskilled person and

is also time consuming. Peeling is the removal of skin from 13 green mature

plantain. Slicing is carried out to reduce the size of product so as to enable it

to suit the processing and consumer requirements. At present, peeling and

slicing of plantain is done manually by stainless steel knives. This

conventional method poses danger to operator’s finger by inflicting injury.

According Athira V. A. et al., (2017). Flour can be made from green

unripe banana, cooking banana or plantain. Fruits are hand-peeled and sliced

or chopped into pieces about 5-10 mm thick. The slices will be dried in the

sun by spreading out the slices on mats, on bamboo framework, on cement

floors, or on a roof or sheets of corrugated iron or simply on a swept bare

ground. Various designs of solar dryers can also be used, or they may be

dried in ovens, over fires, in a cabinet dryer or tunnel dryer.

Krishanu Ganguly et al., (2014) Peeling is an important preliminary

stage of fruits and vegetable processing. The quality and the final price of the

processed products is highly dependent on this stage. Manual peeling is

possible for any kind of product but high losses and considerable

consumption of time and labour have encouraged the peeling industry to use

other methods.

Olutomilola and Omoaka (2018). Stated that Peeling of plantain is a

major challenge in processing of plantain because of its configuration. Mainly,

plantain peeling is still being done manually.It has also been reported that

plantain is an important world food crop that is far more important to food

security and livelihoods of millions of people in Africa, Asia and South/Central

America (Frison and Sharrock, 1998).

Theoretical Lens

This study is anchored on Oscar Lewis sociology which investigated

poverty and its trend among society. Lewis came up with a theory commonly

known as the ‘’Cycle of Poverty’’. The cycle of poverty is the term used to

refer to a phenomenon in which poor families become trapped in poverty for

generations. This is because they have no access to long-term education and

no long term financial guarantees. Lewis identified the following in his cycle of

poverty. One of this is should they get a job, it is likely to be short term and

earning the government’s minimum wage.Therefore, they get all the money

from their wage but keeps them in poverty, simply because they do not have

enough money to get out of it. Rowntree, in 1901, was innovative in stressing

a ‘’ Cycle of poverty’’. Among recent economists, Sen is noteworthy in looking

beyond narrow monetary based measures of poverty, Townsend highlighted

the variety of resources needed to escape poverty. There is a way to escape,

poverty one of this is perseverance. Poverty and inequality have been

recurrent challenges in the Philippines and have again come to the fore in the

wake of the current global financial crisis and rising food, fuel, and commodity

prices experienced in 2008. Lack of education and skills contribute to poverty

and in conjunction with insufficient access to employment opportunities, it is

possibly the cause of rural poverty (Aliber, 2003).

METHOD

This chapter presents the methodology of the study. It includes the

research participants, data sampling, research locale, research instruments,

design and procedure, trustworthiness of the study, and ethical provisions.

Moreover, it offers readers with clear information on how the scientific

standards of research have been complied.

Participant and Sampling

Banana Peelers in Barangay Kimamon will be used as key informants

for the discussion and as the source of data needed in this study. I will use

purposive sampling. Purposive sampling, also known as judgmental,

selective, or subjective sampling, is a form of non-probability sampling in

which researchers rely on their own judgment when choosing members of the

population to participate in their study. This sampling method requires

researchers to have prior knowledge about the purpose of their studies so that

they can properly choose and approach eligible participants. Researchers use

purposive sampling when they want to access a particular subset of people,

as all participants of a study are selected because they fit a particular profile

(Foley, 2018) .

Research Locale

This study will be conducted at Barangay Kimamon, Santo Tomas,

Davao del Norte, Philippines. This Barangay that have Banana Peelers lived

and work.

Research Participants

Participants involved were 15 banana peelers,Ten banana peelers

involved in the in depth interview, while other five were used focused group
discussions. The reason for selecting these people is that, we researchers

know that they are a capable people that can answer the questions and can

provide the information we needed for the study (Saunders Lewis 2012).

Research Instruments

In order to gather the data, an interview will be done. Thus, the

researchers will prepare an interview guide prior to the conduct individual

interview and focus group discussion which consists of questions pertaining to

the research objectives of this study. An interview guide is a list of questions

the researchers will ask your participants during the interview. The order of

the questions and the level of degree will vary based on the type of interview

(Angus, 2013). The process of creating such a guide can help to focus and

organize the line of thinking and therefore questioning. Furthermore, the

researchers will use an interview guide as a mode of gathering in-depth

information about my topic. Their answers and responses will be recorded

through audio and video recordings

Design and Procedure

This research is phenomenological qualitative study that examines

human experiences through the descriptions provided by the people involved.

The goal of this study is to know the stories of every participant in banana

peeling. A phenomenological study is defined as the structures of

consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view. An

experience directed toward an object by virtue of its content together with

appropriate enabling conditions (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2013).

This study would probably look into several perspectives in the situation by

enabling to know how does their lives being a banana peeler. We conducted

an interview to gather the data by having set of questions for the participants

to answer. We will also gather data by recording the response of the

respondents during interview. However, recordings were only done after the

participants have allowed us record their voice because there are some

participants who may think that their voices could be used for other purposes

apart from the academic intended purpose. Ten participants had an in-depth

interview.

We, the researchers conducted this research through an interview to

our ten participants. To gather the data, first, the participants were identified

through purposive sampling. They were requested to sign a consent form that

proved they are willing to share their knowledge that is needed in the study.

Second, participants were oriented about the study and were asked if they’re

willing to participate through in-depth interview as a means of data collection.

And lastly, it is important to accentuate that the interview will be about the

participants personal views and experiences and therefore there are no right

or wrong answers (Dornyei, 2007). Interviews were done through audio and

video recordings with the consent of the participants.

Trustworthiness of the Study

Trustworthiness or rigor of a study refers to the degree of confidence in

data, interpretation, and methods used to ensure the quality of a study. In

each study, researchers should establish the protocols and procedures

necessary for a study to be considered worthy of consideration by readers.

Although most experts agree trustworthiness is necessary, debates have

been waged in the literature as to what constitutes trustworthiness (Connelly,

2016) 33 To accomplish trustworthiness of the study, I will address issues of

credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.

Credibility. Credibility refers to the degree to which the research

represents the actual meanings of the research participants, or the “truth

value” (Moon, Brewer, Januchowski Hartley, Adams, & Blackman. 2016) The

credibility of research findings that are used to make policy recommendations

is particularly important for ecosystem management; assessing the extent to

which the reader believes the recommendations are credible has implications

for the expected success of implementation. The researcher, will ensure

credibility in my study through methods triangulation. This involves utilizing

different data collection methods in order to check the consistency of the

findings.

Transferability. Transferability, a type of external validity, refers to the

degree to which the phenomenon or findings described in one study are

applicable or useful to theory, practice, and future research that is, the

transferability of the research findings to other contexts (Moon et. al., 2016).

As a qualitative researcher, we can enhance transferability by doing a

thorough job of describing the research context and the assumptions that

were central to the research.

 Dependability. Dependability refers to the consistency and reliability of

the research findings and the degree to which research procedures are

documented, allowing someone outside the research to follow, audit, and

critique the research process (Moon et. al., 2016). As a qualitative researcher,

we will document research design and implementation, including the

methodology and methods.

Confirmability. To achieve confirmability, researchers must

demonstrate that the results are clearly linked to the conclusions in a way that

can be followed and, as a process, replicated. Its relevance to application is

similar to credibility, where confirmability has particular implications for studies

that provide policy recommendations (Moon et. al., 2016). The researcher will

document the procedures for checking and rechecking the data throughout

the study. Also, I will actively search for and describe and negative instances

that contradict prior observations. And, after, I will conduct a data audit that

examines the data collection and analysis procedures and makes judgments

about the potential for bias or distortion.

Ethical Provisions

The dominant concern of the study was to respect the rights, privacy,

and confidentiality of the Banana Peelers. It also minimizes the risk of the

participants as the participant’s confidentiality was taken care of. The

participants were advised that they have their own rights to whether they will

withdraw or change her information at any time up to the completion of the

data collection process. They were requested to verify his/her individual

transcript after the interview or after the discussion. The participants are

always given an opportunity to remove and refine the information which they

felt that may track their identity or they may be uncomfortable with. The

interview transcripts were not advised to be seen by the research instructor

before being removed and refined. The researchers had reserved its rights to

use the alias to cover their real names. The consent form is an important tool

in the conduct of data collection and this research study in general. The

consent had been explained well to the Banana Peelers and any disapproval

on the part of the participants for some of their personal reasons and decided

to withdraw their participation of the study was highly respected.

All participants were given the explanation of the study and will be

informed that they have a right to respond or not to respond to those

questions which were asked from them during the interview. The researchers

may stop the interview when the informants do not answer the question.

When an informant felt uncomfortable during the interview, the researchers

respected their right to privacy.

Building and maintaining trust is vital to healthy environment where

there is always a value and a respect (Dowd-Higgins, 2014). All of the

participants were given a consent form before scheduling the interviews and

participating in the phenomenological research process. Securing the

participants information and maintaining its confidentiality to ensure that all

responses were secured from an inappropriate disclosure to enhance

reliability and validity of the provided data.

 Finally, the informants ensured of the benefits they can gain from the

participation of the study. The researchers were heading back to the

informants after the conduct of the study in order to share the research

findings as well as the solution to their problems in facing many challenges

and the results of the study were addressed to them accordingly.

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