₦airaland Forum

IS PROFIT OF 60% NOT ENOUGH ON CASSAVA FARMING?

If a Cassava Farmer expend cost as follows on cultivating one (1) acre cassava farm and eventually got a yield of 8 tons, would selling at farm gate price of N80,000 per ton not be profitable?

Land lease: N20,000, land clearing and stumping: N50,000. Ploughing: N25,000, Ridging: N35,000, Stems: N30,000, Planting: N15,000, Pre-emergence herbicide (plus application): N29,000, Post-emergence herbicide (plus application) twice: N50,000, Fertilizer (pus application): N126,000 and harvesting: N20,000. Making a total cost of N400,000.

And with a yield of 8 tons; which can even be more because of fertilizer application, sold at the rate of N80,000, the proceed would b N640,000. That is a whopping 60% return on Investment. This ROI could be higher if the yield is more than 8 tons, which is very achievable.
Will you not consider this enough profit for cassava farmers instead of the outrageous prices of N150,000 and above that many farmers are just calling off the air?

When this farm gate price of N80,000 is added to the likely associated logistic/supply cost of around N30,000 per ton, the landing cost at processing factories should be around N110,000. There is no processor that would consider this price too high, to be accommodated in his/her operations costing.

At this landing cost of N110,000, a garri processor will be able to produce at a profit and sell a bag of white fermented garri at less than N40,000 for 50-55kg bag containing 22 custard rubbers. And the retail price of one custard rubber will just be about N2,000. Same will apply to the fate of our precious fufu, and the size of a wrap retail for N100 could be bigger than the current embarrassing chicken egg size.

At this landing cost of N110,000, selling price of industrial products like High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF), Cassava Starch and the likes will become lower, and they will be able to take their right competitive positions locally and even at the global market stage.

Seriously, we should all begin to see the pricing across cassava value chain as a collective responsibility, for the betterment of every stakeholder involved. The current system, which seems to favour a sect at a time and wound the others, and would later turn the other way is not really favoring anyone, after all.

We all need to come to a common pricing understanding that will make the entire value chain sustainable for all, not once in a while, but all the time.

God no go shame us.

Kazeem Lamidi
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