Typical bacterial wilt symptoms in enset plants above two years old is that the innermost leaf sheaths become yellowish and droop. The control measures used by farmers are inadequate, and seem to facilitate the distribution of the disease. In areas of greatest infestation, farmers loan or borrow farming and processing tools. Therefore both men and women engaged in cultivating, processing, and cutting leaves spread the disease. Too frequently, infected enset plants are disposed of near the enset farm, and, as such, they may be a potential source of the disease inoculum and its re-spread.
Some farmers fallow the enset field and practice rotation with annual crops.
By contrast, in the area that is relatively free of bacterial wilt, farmers practice control measures such as uprooting the infected bacterial wilt enset plants and keeping them away from the household, other enset plants, and cattle. Farmers also try to keep healthy plants away from contaminated farm and processing tools. Some households decorticate and process infected enset plants at their early stage of infection. The wealthier households have the choice of utilizing diseased plants or not. The poor have less choice and may use it for home consumption, purchase it, or receive it from more affluent households as payment for their labor or craft product.