The Federal Government is making efforts to increase the production of cassava, a staple crop for many farmers, to make it an export product. This was the focus of a train-the-trainer workshop on mechanised cassava farming at the Olabisi Onabanjo University (OOU), Ago Iwoye in Ogun State. Daniel Essiet reports.
By 2020, global cassava trade could increase by 30 per cent, reflecting growth in export demand for cassava feed used for chicken, pigs, cattle, fish, cassava food products, such as instant meals, snacks, and ingredients for sweeteners and prepared foods, and non-food products as starch and flour for textiles and papers.
This means greater opportunities for Asian countries, which through the application of new technologies in breeding and new ways of cassava cultivation, have brought more cash to farmers.
On account of these achievements, the Federal Government sees Asia as a model for food security progress from which Nigeria should learn.
One of the institutions of innovation in cassava research and development that contributed to the success of cassava in Thailand and other parts of Asia and Latin America is the Columbia-based Centro Internacional de Agri-cultura Tropical (CIAT).
Dr. Reinhardt Howeler, acclaimed agronomist and soil scientist, who has worked for 39 years at CIAT and was instrumental to the increase in cassava production in Asia, was in Nigeria to assist the Federal Government in the implementation of its cassava transformation agenda.
Addressing a train-the-trainer workshop on mechanised cassava farming at the Olabisi Onabanjo University, Ago Iwoye, Ogun State, Howeler said cassava has a major role to play in rural development in Asia.
This role continues to evolve, driven by the globalisation of markets, long-term income growth, increasing population, and new technology for cassava and alternative energy sources.
Howeler noted that cassava is a money spinner in Asia because the people made the fastest progress in the application of new technologies in breeding and its new propagation, resulting in yields due to the planting of new high-yielding cassava varieties.
In Asia, he said cassava production is growing on marginal lands where rice cannot be cultivated. The main market growth is for industrial products – native or modified starch and their derivatives.
He stressed that Nigerian farmers need to grow improved varieties of cassava, for the nation to position the crop as an important source of income and that the wide range of products make it a flexible component in a strategy for development.
At the moment, he said, the government is supporting research to help develop and distribute new resistant varieties to farmers to boost cassava production.
The resistant varieties, he noted, are higher yielding, allowing farmers to increase their productivity and process excess production. Another advantage is that the resistant cassava varieties can be replicated on the ground by local farmers and the crop is sustainable.
Along with increased cassava production, he said research has yielded an important and high-impact technologies. He explained that cassava has unique characteristics that help subsistence farmers.
Howeler said cassava has also the potential to be a profitable cash crop, adding that in Thailand cassava proved that it can become a profitable crop with international breeding partnerships, a national commitment and marketing.
The potential of cassava is high compared to rice, he said, adding that the usefulness of cassava as a supplier of high-quality and inexpensive industrial starch and animal feed, seemed not to be appreciated here as in Thailand, where the crop is an export product.
In countries, where the commercialisation of cassava has reached an advanced stage, he said such technologies had been developed in recent years that make planting, harvesting, and post-harvest processing more efficient and less time-consuming.
The efforts to make cassava production more cost-effective may explain the revival of global cassava production designed for animal feed over the last decade.
The Project Leader, Cassava Transformation Team, Dr Martin Fregene, listed the various products for the future: fresh roots and leaves, home or village processing, starch, flour and animal feed.
Each of these was analysed in terms of growth source – innovation, competition, or concentration, potential, and challenges.
He stressed the importance of researchers, extension workers and farmers trained in cassava research and cultivation.
He said the government would promote the sector to make it attractive and profitable for investors.
“Agriculture should be seen as a business and the government should continue to promote the sector to make it profitable for operators along the production chain,” he said.
With the government’s objective of attracting more participation in the sector, he said some initiatives and incentives had been developed to motivate people and firms.
In view of the strategic importance of the sector, he said the government had taken various measures to facilitate its transformation.
He stressed the importance of partnership with the private sector, saying agric-business could not thrive without the support of the private sector.
One of the scientists, who worked on the varieties of Pro-Vitamin A cassava, launched by the Federal Government on March 16, 2012, Dr. Chiedozie Egesi, said efforts had been made to disseminate the cassava varieties to rural households to tackle vitamin A deficiency.
Egesi, who is of the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike, said the institute would ensure that farmers have access to Vitamin A cassava stems for planting in some states.
He said NRCRI is partnering the government and the private sector to ensure that farmers in the local government areas produce and market vitamin A cassava products.
Besides improving the health and nutrition of the people, the cultivation of the varieties can provide jobs, improve incomes and lift poor households out of poverty.
Consumers like the varieties because of their nutritional qualities.
While the workshop brought together, local farmers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) representatives, delegates from the government to share knowledge on cassava, identify new challenges in research, improve farmer adoption and marketing of cassava, and set up new research collaborations that are focused not primarily on research, but on the development of new products for cassava farmers, the ministry conveyed a meeting in Abuja to show the way forward for cassava bread.
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Adewumi Adesina, has said there is need for sustainability of the High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) inclusion in bread; therefore, stakeholders have to work together to ensure the passage of the Cassava Bread Bill into law.
Informing participants of the Draft Cassava Flour Bill, the Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs. Ibukun Odusote, who represented the Agriculture minister, said it had become necessary to push for the bill to allay fears that the government had abandoned the cassava bread project.
Despite the hitches in the past few months, there is silver lining in the sky for cassava and sorghum.
Mrs. Odusote said many bakers were adopting cassava/wheat composite flour.
The stakeholders met in Abuja not only to get updates on the state of the N10 billion Cassava Development Fund, but also to fine-tune the Draft Bill on Cassava Inclusion in bread for transmission to the National Assembly for passage into law.
The Permanent Secretary said President Goodluck Jonathan approved N10billion Cassava Bread Fund and set up an Oversight Committee to oversee the fund.
The committee members, according to Mrs. Odusote, were drawn from such organisations as the Nigerian Cassava Growers Association (NCGA), National Cassava Processors and Marketers Association (NCAPMA), National Association of Master Bakers and Confectioners of Nigeria, National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Standards Organisations of Nigeria (SON), Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Industry (BoI), Federal Institute of Industrail Research, Oshodi (FIIRO), National Institute of Food Science and Technology, among others.
It was observed that the BoI oversees the primary production in which small-scale farmers would be supported to cultivate 29,500hectares of cassava for the production of 590,000 metric tonnes of tubers for HQCF.
Towards this, she said a list of farmers cultivating between two and four hectares each is being compiled by the NCGA to ensure sustainable supply of roots to small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
For BoI, the equipment support to the Master bakers and SMEs is its domain. It will ensure low interest loans for their working capital. For now, according to the Permanent Secretary, letters of offer are being distributed to beneficiaries.
It expected that the actualisation of 20 per cent cassava flour inclusion in wheat for bread would save about N127 billion and create 1.3 million jobs in the sector.
Meanwhile, the draft bill is yet to be completed and the time of submission to the National Assembly Committees on Agriculture is yet to be determined, according to a member of the Legal Committee at the technical session during the forum.
