Are you looking for a business to do that won’t take much of your time and attention or a lucrative agric business? Try your hand on crop farming, especially cassava planting. With the increasing diverse use of cassava products in Nigeria, the product has been in high demand over the years.
Being a source of livelihood and food for millions of Nigerians, cassava planters across the country have never met the demand for their produce for five years. Also, 90 per cent of Nigerian households buys or consumes cassava products every day.
The tuber is a hot cake in international markets. These include chips, flakes, cubes, peeler, starch and flour, pellets, etc
Food and beverage industries use cassava products’ derivatives in the production of jelly caramel and chewing gum. Pharmaceutical and chemical industries also use cassava alcohol (ethanol) in the production of cosmetics and drugs.
The products also find ready use in the manufacture of dry cell, textiles and school chalk, etc. Cassava cubes are used mainly in the compounding of livestock feeds. Thus there is a very high demand for cassava products in both the local and export markets.
RECALL
• Start-up capital is little
• Manual labour involved is cheap
• The tools to use are readily available
• High profit is guaranteed.
Chief Executive Officer, Agboola Farms, Mr. Ade Agboola, explains that a small-scale cassava farm involves little start-up capital as you can lease an acre of land for as low as N5,000 in the outskirts of Lagos and some areas in Ogun State, depending on the location.
According to him, after you have cleared the land for preparation for as low as N3,000, you can buy cassava stem cuttings for N20,000 for 40 bundles, although bundle price vary per location, then fertilizer for N5,000 depending on the quantity.
“With an investment of about N30, 000, farmers can make a profit of about N200,000 or more depending on his bargaining power, especially with food processing companies,” he said. When getting a site to set up a cassava farm, pick an area with deep well, drained loamy soil, adequate rainfall, and warm and moist climatic conditions because cassava grows best in these areas. And an easy way to identify lands with these conditions is to see if there is a thick vegetation around it. You can seek the opinion of an experienced farmer or agriculturist to help you verify the richness of the soil before you proceed to make a purchase.
Select the best cassava variety to plant as there are wide breeds of cassava that you can grow, but the best breeds to cultivate are the types that widely are accepted by people, gives great yields, grows fast, and are resistant to pests and diseases. Selecting the right breed to go with, will determine how successful your cassava farm will be. If you grow what people are not interested in, you may go out of business faster than you imagined. Find out what the available buyers in your locality are interested in, then grow those types of cassava crops.
Endeavour to select healthy cassava stem cuttings, which are used to grow cassava crops. Selecting healthy stems is very key to growing rich cassava crops that your market would quickly purchase.
You can buy cassava stem cuttings in markets and villages. After your initial purchase of the cassava stem cuttings, the best place to keep getting healthy cassava stem cuttings are on your own farm. Planting healthy stem cuttings is important because they would help you to greatly reduce the spread of cassava pests and diseases.
Before you plant your cassava crop products, you need to consider the land tillage method, the time of the year, the seed bed type, and the method of preparation, handling, and planting of the cassava stem cuttings.
Planting the cassava within all the right conditions will ensure you reap a healthy harvest. It will increase chances of good yields, and would ensure you always have the cassava harvests just when a lot of buyers need it.
A key success factor in this business is the nearness of the produce to the market. Remember, if the tubers are not processed within 48 to 72 hours, cassava may be stale. If your source is far from your market, you may have to decide on a very reliable means of transportation to get your tubers to site as soon as possible.
As your business expands, you can invest in cassava processing machinery which may help to save a lot of costs and position your business for export. How? There is a huge opportunity, with a much higher profit potential, in exporting it to the increasing number of companies abroad.
The tuber is a hot cake in international markets. These include chips, flakes, cubes, peeler, starch and flour, pellets, etc. Many European and American countries like Germany, United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, among others, demand huge quantities of processed cassava products annually.
In fact, the use of cassava for mixing livestock feed is now in vogue in Europe and this has gained wide acceptance. Apart from livestock feeds, processed cassava serves as industrial raw material for the production of adhesive bakery products, dextrin, dextrose glucose, lactose and sucrose. Dextrin is used as a binding agent in the paper and packing industry and adhesive in cardboard, plywood and veneer binding.
