Worried about the low yield of cassava, the Federal Government has said it would be deploying improved technologies to advance the yield of the crop.
This was disclosed by the Director of Federal Department of Agriculture, Mrs Karima Babaginda while speaking at a Workshop and Capacity Building of Youth and Women Farmers to Address Yield Gap in Cassava Production for South East at National Root Crop Research Institute, Umudike, Abia State.
Nigeria is the world’s leading producer of cassava despite its low yield of below 10mt/ha, compared to other countries such as Thailand. However, the country has the potential of having good varieties that could give more than 40mt/ha.
Mrs Babangida said the purpose of the workshop was to ensure that the yield gap in cassava production is addressed through dissemination and adoption of improved technologies as well as innovation by smallholder farmers.
“This is coupled with encouraging youth and gender empowerment activities that will not only increase productivity and income but also offer more economic opportunities to farmers in the cassava value chain.
“Accordingly, this will facilitate the creation of sustainable cassava planting materials production system; provide yield productivity technologies, ensure good agronomic practices, empowerment of youth and women in production, access to information using necessary digital tools to create competitiveness and profitability of Cassava enterprise for smallholder farmers.
“In the end, the value chain will be more efficient in dissemination and adoption of new improved productivity and raise incomes of cassava growers and seed entrepreneurs in the cassava industry,” she said.
She said given the prime position of cassava commodity to providing food security and ensuring raw material to many industries such as pharmaceuticals and ethanol among others, efforts should be intensified to improve productivity in order to attract more people and benefits into cassava production.
“The steps to weed management and best practices tool developed by researchers at IITA has shown good results in helping farmers to increase productivity to about 20 tons per hectare.
“Also, the Cassava seed system; use of smart agriculture (AKILIMO) application, seed tracker and other digital tools developed by researchers at the international institute have good potentials to improve cassava productivity.
“It is in an effort to intensify and out scale these tools to farmers in different states and communities in Nigeria that underscores the essence of this workshop.
“The efforts of many international researchers to support and complement the National agricultural research system in Nigeria to generate location-specific technologies to achieve yield gap in cassava production must be appreciated”, she noted.
She expressed optimism that the challenges posed as low yield could be surmounted through activities such as the workshop, adoption of appropriate policy measures, deployment of efficient technologies, improved agronomic practices and crapping systems that would take maximum advantage of new and improved varieties, which could be easily adopted by farmers.
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