Mozambique: Cassava Development Strategy Launched
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
13 July 2008
Posted to the web 14 July 2008
Maputo
Mozambican farmers produce more than enough cassava than is required for domestic consumption, but the surplus is not used due to poor quality and lack of adequate processing capacity.
Studies undertaken to draw up the Cassava Development Strategy, launched in Maputo this week, note that cassava is still not being sufficiently exploited to overcome food deficits and to create wealth.
The strategy states that cassava has been recognised as a priority crop for food security, which should encourage better quality production, domestic marketing and export, and diversifying the ways in which the crop is used.
To date, cassava has been cultivated without any strategy to increase production and sales. The implementation of the cassava strategy is intended to overcome these difficulties, in the context of the current world food crisis.
"The development of the cassava processing industry is at a very incipient stage, and currently there are no integrated companies dedicated to this crop", according to a study on the cassava value chain.
What little cassava marketing there is takes place at household level, and does not go beyond small scale informal transactions.
The strategy presents a project to invest in cassava in the countryside, where about 60 per cent of households produce the crop. The idea behind this project is to make cassava both a food security crop and a source of income for the producers.
In the food security aspect, cassava can be used as a staple, and can partially replace wheat in making bread. It can also be transformed into cassava flour and tapioca. Diet can be strengthened through the calorific bulk of cassava, and also through the minerals found in cassava leaves.
Estimates from 2005 indicate that the production, processing and marketing of cassava has an impact on more than 80 per cent of the Mozambican rural population. Even without a developed local market, they could benefit from a cassava-based diet.
As for generating income, if current production were sold at the prices practiced in the fields, it would bring in almost 250 million dollars a year. Farmers who grow the crop could earn money through direct transactions with local consumers and in the frontier markets.
Because of lack of processing, cassava in Mozambique is much cheaper than in other southern African countries where, for example, good quality cassava flour can be sold for up to three times the price of cassava at the farm gate.
The Strategy argues that processing cassava will increase the value of the crop and maximise the gain for household producers and for the country.
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