The nigeria economy and cassava production

The trend for cassava production in Nigeria is
rapidly increasing and expansion of the multi-
purpose plant has been relatively steady.
Nigeria is making use of its cassava crop to
diversify and boost its economy by making
cassava production a sustainable economic
edge over its contemporaries.
By Chigozie EGWUATU
Cassava is Africa’s most important staple food
crop, after maize, and Africa produces half of
the world’s supply. The plant is used to make a
starchy food called gari, and it is also a source
for biofuel as well as animal feed. According to
the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO)
document repository, Nigeria is currently the
largest producer of cassava in the world with an
annual output of over 34 million tonnes of
tuberous roots. Despite its preeminent position
in cassava growing, Nigeria is yet to make much
impact on the global cassava market, since most
of its crop is consumed domestically. But with
new initiatives under way aimed at increasing
and improving cassava production and
developing new ways to use the crop, Nigeria
hopes to utilise cassava as part of its strategy to
diversify its economy away from petroleum.
Prior to the discovery of oil in the 1970s,
agriculture was the mainstay of the Nigerian
economy, accounting for about two-thirds of the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With the oil
boom, agriculture’s contribution to GDP declined
to 25 percent by 1980 and Nigeria moved from
being a large exporter to a major importer of
agricultural products. Since the mid-1980s, as a
result of a decline in oil revenue and policy
measures implemented under a Structural
Adjustment Programme (SAP), agriculture’s
contribution to GDP has risen to about 40
percent.
Nigerian cassava production is by far larger than
production in Brazil and almost double the
production of Indonesia and Thailand. Cassava
production in other African countries, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana,
Madagascar, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda
appears small in comparison to Nigeria’s
substantial output.
Cassava has been noted as one produce in the
agric sector that can re-launch Nigeria into the
league of economically viable nations using the
agric route. Efforts in that direction have been
steady since the inception of the Jonathan
administration and the Agriculture Minister,
erudite Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina has been raising
the stakes in the cassava production. Recently
he presented a loaf of bread that was baked
with cassava flour to the Nigerian President who
made a good show of the event by eating the
bread gleefully before his Ministers at the
Federal Executive Council meeting. By that
action President Jonathan was directly making a
statement that the he supports the effort of the
Agric Minister in his drive to make cassava
production one of the foreign exchange earners
for Nigeria as well as a product that take us to
greater economic heights.
This sub-sector apart from being alternative
source of revenue also has the potential to
generate the much needed employment for our
teeming youths. It also promises to feed a
variety of local industries which use cassava as
raw material thereby reducing our over
dependence on other countries for materials we
can produce locally. Such industries as
pharmaceutical and beverage industries stand to
benefit a lot from cassava and the economies of
scale as so enormous that it ought not to be
ignored.
A wide range of agro-ecological conditions allows
for very diverse crop production. The northern
part of the country is suitable for sorghum,
millet, maize, cowpea, groundnut and cotton.
The main food crops in the middle belt and the
south are cassava, yam, plantain and maize.
Low-lying and seasonally flooded areas are
increasingly being used for rice production.
Broadly speaking, the cassava-growing belt falls
within three agro-ecological zones of the
southeast, southwest and the central areas. The
first two zones fall within the humid tropics. The
predominant soil types are the ferralitic soils
which are rich in free iron but low in mineral
reserves and are consequently low in fertility.
The central zone lies between the southern and
the drier northern agro-ecological zones. The
soils are poor, due to leaching from heavy and
intense rainfall and so limited fertility is a
constraint to agricultural production.
However, recently, Nasarawa, a state in the
northern part of the country, is competing
favourably with the southern states in cassava
production, marketing and processing.
Information reaching Nigerian OrientNews has
it that Nasarawa State has overtaken many
other states of the federation in the mass or
commercial production of cassava. Confirmed
report also has it that the seriousness and
commitment of the Nasarawa State government
to the practice of farming earned the state this
enviable position among other states of the
federation.
Some agricultural experts who commented
about the good news attributed Nasarawa
State’s success to the willingness and readiness
of farmers in the state to adopt and put into
practice modern farming methods as well as the
commitment of the state government to the
development of agriculture in the state.
Some cassava production experts, however,
described the taking over of Nasarawa as the
number one cassava producing state in the
country as a major challenge to other states,
especially states in the South and East, that
used to pride themselves as champions in
cassava production and processing. The experts
and stakeholders who belong to this school of
thought also lauded the relentless efforts of the
country’s cassava researchers and research
institutes like the International Institute of
Tropical Agriculture (IITA), as well as other
research institutes in the country in making sure
that they increased the number of cassava
farmers in the country, just as they celebrated
the news with farmers associations like the
Nigeria Cassava Growers Association (NCGA). The
experts have, however, called on the lawmakers
at the National Assembly in Abuja to consider
and give speedy deliberation and hearing to the
presidential bill of compulsory inclusion of 10
per cent cassava flour in the production of
bread and other flour-based foods by President
Goodluck Jonathan in the recent time.
In Nigeria, cassava has great potential both for
export and domestic consumption. The
usefulness of cassava plant has a wide spectrum
ranging from the leaves to the roots which are
mostly used in animal feeds and food
processing. Cassava leaves have a high protein
content (20-25% of dry leaves), while cassava
roots have 25-30% starch but are low in protein.
Many studies have shown the effect of different
processing methods on the chemical contents
and nutritional values of cassava leaves and
roots; the use of cassava roots and leaves for
feeding pigs; young stems and leaves for feeding
cows; the use of cassava dried leaf powder as
animal feed for chickens and pigs; using cassava
stem to grow mushrooms. Cassava roots have
multiple end-uses, such as for the starch
industry, for food and feed processing, for
pharmaceutical industry and export.
Cassava is an easy crop to grow. It can grow in
poor soils and produces high yields with suitable
management. Previously, people were reluctant
to grow cassava, because they thought that
cassava caused soil degradation and produced
low profits. But in reality one hectare of cassava
can produce 60-80 tonnes of roots and leaves.
The situation has changed because of the
development of sustainable cultivation
techniques and new high-yield varieties. Cassava
has become cash crop in many countries in the
world. Cassava starch is now being produced
competitively, and cassava markets are
promising. The combination of growing and
processing cassava has created many jobs in
developed countries, has increased exports,
attracted foreign investments, and contributed
to industrialization and modernization of several
rural area.
Being an excellent source of starch and flour,
cassava production in Nigeria has a huge
development potential. There are several
hundred chemical products made from starch.
In China today, considering the need to protect
their environment and the limited mineral oil
reserves, at the beginning of 2002 the federal
government of China started a new project of
producing ethanol for use as fuel in automobile.
The production of fuel ethanol will be a Chinese
“sunrise industry” with an estimated value of 2.5
billion dollar per year. Among maize, sugarcane
and cassava, the main crops to be used for
ethanol production in China, cassava has a
competitive advantage because of its lower cost
of raw material and a simpler ethanol
processing technology. For that reason, it is
expected that the Chinese cassava cropping area
will expand to about 600,000 to 800,000
hectares during the current decade.
Cassava is particularly suitable and relatively
cheap for baking flour. It is quite suitable for
production of modified starch. Modified starch is
a main product among starch derivatives
because it has become a new raw material in
multiple industries. For example, modified
starch is the third most important in the paper
making industry, and large amounts are also
used in the textile industry. Although the
amount of modified starch produced is still
relatively small in Nigeria.
These are exciting times for cassava enthusiasts
in Nigeria and indeed across Africa. But the
farmers in their little capacity are faced with the
challenges of funds and market. The banks are
unwilling to lend money to the farmers. In spite
of the Local Purchasing Order (LPO) the Federal
Government has given to cassava farmers to
supply the national strategic grains reserves,
banks are still unwilling to give loans to farmers.
The stance of the banks is a business decision,
as the reason given is that the demand for
cassava products is still too small.
The Federal Government has however been
emphasising a private sector-led market for
agricultural produce. But Segun Adewumi,
president, Nigerian Cassava Growers Association
(NCGA) says the reason companies that need
cassava as raw materials are unable to buy
from Nigerian farmers is that the cost of
production in Nigeria is too high.
There is an ongoing plan by the Federal
Government to set up cassava processing mills,
but Adewumi says the government is no longer
carrying farmers along in the setting up of the
cassava processing mills. In his words: “In all
advanced countries, governments guarantee
markets for farmers and banks guarantee
financing for agricultural produce. Meanwhile,
N6 billion is being proposed for the purchase of
phones to give to farmers, all in the hope of
getting them to produce more when they are not
even guaranteed of a market.”
Looking at ‘the way forward’ it is wise to be
mindful of the past. In the early years of
Structural Adjustment, Nigerian agricultural
trade policy set out to achieve many of the
objectives being discussed here; promotion of
agricultural exports and reduction of agricultural
raw material imports. During that time four
strategies were utilized: trade liberalization,
export promotion, backward integration and
privatization. In the early years these initiatives
gave rise to significant improvements in non-oil
exports, with cocoa leading the way.
Unfortunately this growth was not sustained.
The reasons cited: poor quality of exported
product failing to attract good international
prices, inefficient large scale farms established
by the private sector resulting in large capital
losses and problems in sourcing supply because
out growers failed to honour contractual
agreements with industries.
It is very important that the above mentioned
issues are addressed appropriately and highly
effective cultivation technologies are developed,
with a well-integrated production, transport,
processing and marketing system put in place. In
this way, cassava will become a key link in the
industrial chain in Nigeria and other less
developed countries, resulting in increase in
people’s income, which in turn will lead to social
progress.
It is pertinent to state that government
functionaries whose obligation it is to promote
healthy economic position in the country should
desist from sabotaging the effort of the federal
government by paying superficial services and
embrace patriotism. For instance, the
government mandated farmers to supply garri
to the national strategic grains reserves but
most of the contracts to supply the grains
reserves were given to contractors who were not
farmers and have no obligation to buy from
Nigerian farmers. They could decide to buy from
Benin Republic, Ghana or any other
neighbouring country.
Based on the numerous industrial uses of the
crop such as cassava chips, flour, starch, cassava
leaves, which all have export demand and the
country’s comparative advantage in production
of the crop, various heads of Cassava Producers
and Marketers’ Association and export
consultants have equated cassava’s revenue
generation potential to that of crude oil if a
good developmental plan is put in place to
harness it.
Government should also encourage private
sector participation by lending money to real
farmers as against portfolio carrying farmers.
Free-holds on land can also be encouraged by
government initiating cassava farm settlements
so that the rural-urban drift that has
encouraged urban congestion would be reduced.
The potentials that cassava hold for our
economy cannot be over emphasized and
concerned authorities should ensure that the
gains already made by this administration are
sustained and encouraged.

Nice write up,hw can u gv us raw way of utilizing agriculture

Nice write up,hw can u gv us raw way of utilizing cassava production