# Where do plantains come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/plantains/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/plantains.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Plantains come mainly from Uganda, which produced 11.8 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) (11%), Cameroon (11%) and Ghana (10%) follow; the top five together supply 65%. The biggest exporter of plantains (HS 080310) is Ecuador (23% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Plantains grow in the humid tropical lowlands of west and central Africa, the Andean foothills and the Caribbean, and because they are a staple eaten within days of cutting rather than a dessert fruit, they stay close to where they are grown.

*Starchy cooking bananas, boiled, fried or pounded as a staple across west and central Africa and the Caribbean.* Also called: cooking bananas, plantain, matoke.

## Where do plantains come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Uganda | 11.8 million | 27% |
| 2 | DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) | 4.9 million | 11% |
| 3 | Cameroon | 4.7 million | 11% |
| 4 | Ghana | 4.4 million | 10% |
| 5 | Philippines | 3 million | 6.9% |
| 6 | Colombia | 2.7 million | 6% |
| 7 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 2.5 million | 5.6% |
| 8 | Dominican Republic | 1.7 million | 3.8% |
| 9 | Myanmar | 1.5 million | 3.3% |
| 10 | Ecuador | 1.1 million | 2.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 14% |
| | World | 44.2 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Uganda produced 11.8 million tonnes, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) followed with 11%, then Cameroon (11%), Ghana (10%) and Philippines (6.9%). The top five account for 65%, 52 countries reported a crop and 14% came from outside the top ten.

Read that ranking as a map of what people eat rather than of what is sold. FAOSTAT counts plantains and cooking bananas as a separate item from the dessert bananas covered on the [bananas](/commodities/bananas/) page, and the two behave completely differently. Dessert bananas are a globally traded, single-variety industrial crop; plantains are a staple starch grown mostly on smallholdings and eaten locally, boiled, pounded into fufu, roasted or fried into chips.

The growing zone is narrow: consistently warm, humid lowlands with well-distributed rainfall and no frost. That places it across the west and central African forest belt from Ivory Coast to the Congo basin, through the Andean foothills of Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, across the Caribbean, and into parts of southern India and Southeast Asia. Within that belt plantain is often intercropped with cocoa, coffee or cassava rather than grown in dedicated blocks, which is one reason production statistics are less precise than for plantation crops.

World output changed +28% over the ten years to 2024 and +2% on the previous year.

## Who exports and imports plantains?

### Exporters of plantains, fresh or dried (HS 080310), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ecuador | $257.7 million | 23% |
| 2 | Guatemala | $168.3 million | 15% |
| 3 | Colombia | $152.3 million | 14% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $69 million | 6.2% |
| 5 | Greece | $49.7 million | 4.5% |
| 6 | Philippines | $42 million | 3.8% |
| 7 | Belgium | $37.4 million | 3.4% |
| 8 | Germany | $36.6 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | France | $23.4 million | 2.1% |
| 10 | Costa Rica | $23.2 million | 2.1% |
| 11 | Italy | $19.6 million | 1.8% |
| 12 | Mexico | $19.6 million | 1.8% |
| 13 | Nicaragua | $18.9 million | 1.7% |
| 14 | Hungary | $18.1 million | 1.6% |
| 15 | India | $15.8 million | 1.4% |

### Importers of plantains, fresh or dried (HS 080310), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $366.4 million | 33% |
| 2 | Romania | $104.1 million | 9.4% |
| 3 | Belgium | $47 million | 4.2% |
| 4 | Netherlands | $46 million | 4.2% |
| 5 | Hungary | $45.1 million | 4.1% |
| 6 | Saudi Arabia | $44.9 million | 4.1% |
| 7 | Qatar | $36.6 million | 3.3% |
| 8 | Spain | $36.3 million | 3.3% |
| 9 | United Kingdom | $35.8 million | 3.2% |
| 10 | Italy | $30.1 million | 2.7% |
| 11 | Bulgaria | $27.7 million | 2.5% |
| 12 | Bahrain | $27.2 million | 2.5% |
| 13 | North Macedonia | $21.4 million | 1.9% |
| 14 | France | $20.8 million | 1.9% |
| 15 | Canada | $19.8 million | 1.8% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Ecuador was the largest exporter of plantains (HS 080310) in 2024 with 23% of world export value, ahead of Guatemala (15%), on world trade of $1.1 billion (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 33%.

That export figure is small relative to production, and deliberately so: most plantain never enters a formal market at all, let alone an international one. What does trade moves in two streams. The first is ethnic and diaspora food trade, shipping green plantains to cities in Europe and North America with large west African, Caribbean and Latin American populations. The second is regional trade within Africa and Latin America, much of it informal and poorly captured in customs data.

Ecuador and Colombia dominate the recorded export trade because they already have the port infrastructure, cold chain and phytosanitary systems built for dessert bananas, and plantain travels on the same ships.

## What do plantains cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market and no published benchmark price for plantains, and this site does not quote one. Plantains are priced at farm gate and in local wholesale markets, and the price varies enormously by country, by season and even by town, because transport is a large share of delivered cost for a heavy, bulky, perishable staple.

What determines the price in practice is the local harvest and the state of the road. Because plantain is produced year-round rather than in a single harvest, prices move on rainfall and on the condition of feeder roads more than on any seasonal cycle. Where FAO collects producer prices they are published in its producer price series, and regional market information systems in west Africa track wholesale prices town by town.

The export trade prices differently again: green plantain sold by the box on a specification for finger count and grade, negotiated between exporters and importers on terms similar to the banana trade.

## What moves the price of plantains?

### Rainfall and drought

Plantain has shallow roots and a high water requirement, and it does not tolerate dry spells. A poor rainy season cuts bunch weight and can kill young suckers outright, and because the plant takes most of a year to fruit, the effect on supply persists long after the rain returns.

### Black sigatoka and banana wilts

Black leaf streak disease reduces photosynthetic area and cuts yields substantially, and bacterial wilts have devastated plantings in parts of east and central Africa. Smallholders rarely spray, so disease pressure is managed by variety choice and by abandoning infected fields rather than by chemistry.

### Road and transport conditions

A bunch of plantains is heavy, bulky and bruises easily, so transport is a large share of the price a consumer pays. In the rainy season, when feeder roads deteriorate, urban prices can rise sharply while farm-gate prices fall, purely because the crop cannot move.

### Urban demand growth

Rapid urbanisation across west and central Africa has raised demand for staples that can be bought ready to cook, and plantain competes with rice, imported wheat products and cassava for that market. Where imported rice is cheap, plantain loses share.

### Land competition with cocoa

Plantain is often planted to shade young cocoa trees and is then removed as the canopy closes, so plantain supply is partly a by-product of cocoa planting cycles. A wave of cocoa establishment raises plantain output temporarily; a mature cocoa farm produces none.

## How are plantains produced?

Plantain is a giant herb, not a tree. The apparent trunk is a tight roll of leaf sheaths, and the plant grows from an underground corm that produces suckers. A planted sucker takes roughly nine to twelve months to flower and another three to five months to fill the bunch, after which the parent stem is cut down and a selected sucker takes its place, so a mat can produce continuously for years before yields decline and it is replanted.

Harvest is by machete, cutting the whole bunch while still green and hard. Plantains are starchy rather than sweet at this stage; the starch converts to sugar as the fruit ripens, which is why cooking varieties are used green for savoury dishes and ripe for sweeter ones. There is no post-harvest processing for the fresh trade beyond dehanding and packing.

Where processing exists it is simple and adds shelf life: slicing and frying into chips, drying and milling into plantain flour, or fermenting. These products travel and store far better than the fresh fruit and are a growing part of the urban market.

## What are plantains used for?

Almost all of it is eaten as a starchy staple. Green plantain is boiled, steamed, roasted or pounded into a dough eaten with soup or stew, and it fills the role that potatoes or rice fill elsewhere. Riper fruit is fried as a sweeter side dish. Plantain flour and chips are the main processed forms, and both are growing with urban demand for convenience.

Beyond food, the plant is used whole in producing regions: leaves as wrapping and plates, pseudostem fiber for cord and craft, and the residue as mulch and animal fodder. In cocoa and coffee systems the plant's main agronomic role is shade for young trees, which is a use that never appears in production statistics.

## Supply chain and chokepoints

The chain is short, local and largely informal. Bunches move from farm to a local collection point by head-load, bicycle or small truck, then to an urban wholesale market, and the whole journey is usually a matter of hours or days. Losses are high: a bruised or over-ripe bunch is worth very little, and estimates of post-harvest loss in the fresh trade run into double-digit percentages.

The export chain is entirely different and rides on banana infrastructure: packed green in boxes at origin, shipped in refrigerated containers at controlled temperature, and ripened or sold green at destination. Because the volumes are small next to dessert bananas, plantain exporters depend on that shared infrastructure rather than justifying their own.

The structural vulnerability is disease. Plantain cultivars are propagated vegetatively from suckers, so a planting is genetically uniform and a new pathogen can move through a region with little to stop it. Bacterial wilt outbreaks in central and east Africa have destroyed plantings across whole districts, and because the crop is a staple for tens of millions of people, that is a food security question rather than a market one.

## Timeline

- 1516: Plantains reach the Americas. Introduction from west Africa established the crop in the Caribbean and Latin America, where it became a staple and, centuries later, the basis of the small export trade. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 1970s: Black sigatoka spreads through the tropics. The leaf disease reached west Africa and Latin America and cut plantain and banana yields substantially, and it remains the main biological constraint on smallholder production. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2001: Banana xanthomonas wilt appears in Ethiopia. A bacterial wilt with no chemical control began spreading through the Great Lakes region, destroying plantings across whole districts and threatening a staple food supply. (https://www.cabi.org/isc/)
- 2010: Improved hybrids are released in west Africa. Breeding programmes produced black sigatoka-resistant plantain hybrids, though adoption has been limited by taste and texture preferences that favor traditional varieties. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)
- 2019: Urban demand shifts toward processed plantain. Growing city populations increased demand for plantain flour and chips, which store and travel far better than fresh bunches and opened a value-added market for producers. (https://www.fao.org/markets-and-trade/commodities-overview/en)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most plantains

Uganda produced 11.8 million tonnes in 2024, 27% of the world's 44.2 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) was second with 11%. FAOSTAT counts plantains and cooking bananas separately from dessert bananas.

### what is the difference between plantains and bananas

Plantains are starchy cooking varieties eaten green as a staple, usually boiled, pounded or fried; dessert bananas are sweet and eaten raw. FAOSTAT counts them as separate items, and they behave as different commodities: dessert bananas are a traded industrial crop, plantains a locally eaten staple.

### why are plantains barely traded internationally

Because they are a heavy, bulky, perishable staple eaten close to where they grow. World export value is small relative to production, and most of what does trade serves diaspora food markets in Europe and North America or moves informally within Africa and Latin America.

### how are plantains priced

At farm gate and in local wholesale markets, with no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Prices vary by country, season and even by town, because transport is a large share of delivered cost and road conditions in the rainy season move urban prices sharply.

### how long does a plantain take to grow

A planted sucker takes roughly nine to twelve months to flower and another three to five months to fill the bunch. The parent stem is then cut and a selected sucker replaces it, so a mat produces continuously for years before yields decline and it is replanted.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do plantains come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/plantains/.