Cassava product

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) production is vital to the economy of Nigeria as the country is the world's largest producer of the commodity. The crop is produced in 24 of the country's 36 states. In 1999, Nigeria produced 33 million tonnes, while a decade later, it produced approximately 45 million tonnes, which is almost 19% of production in the world. The average yield per hectare is 10.6 tonnes.

In Nigeria, cassava production is well-developed as an organized agricultural crop. It has well-established multiplication and processing techniques for food products and cattle feed. There are more than 40 cassava varieties in use. Cassava is processed in many processing centres and fabricating enterprises set up in the country.

Cassava is grown in many tropical countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Most statistics do not usually distinguish between sweet and bitter varieties; in some, sweet varieties are not included as they are commonly grown as a secondary crop for home consumption. The world production of cassava roots in 1973 (excluding China) is shown in Table 1. Brazil is the largest producer, but most of the crop is consumed locally and exports are only a small portion of the total output. The same pattern applies to other important producers, such as Nigeria, Indonesia, Zaire, India and Colombia. Cassava does not form an important part of the staple diet in Thailand, and that country is now the world's largest exporter of cassava products. In the last few years most of the important producers have greatly increased their production.

Surplus production of cassava products enters international trade in different forms, such as chips, broken dried roots, meal, flour and tapioca starch. Dried cassava roots and meal are used as raw material for compound animal feed, while cassava starch is used for industrial purposes; grocery tapioca is used solely for human consumption.

Exports of cassava products

The principal markets for cassava products are in Europe - the European Economic Community being the most important for dried roots - and for cassava starch the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan. Although complete statistics of world trade in cassava products are not available, thus making it difficult to estimate the total quantity entering international trade, the import statistics of the EEC and the United States show a substantial increase in recent years, particularly for dried cassava roots.

Table 2 shows exports of cassava products in 1973 in comparison with the production of cassava roots in some of the major exporting countries, except Indonesia, for which figures were not available.

Table 1:WORLD PRODUCTION OF CASSAVA ROOTS IN 1973 (IN THOUSAND TONS)

Table 2: EXPORTS OF CASSAVA PRODUCTS AND PRODUCTION OF ROOTS