Business
FG To Partner Private Sector On Cassava Precessing
The Federal Government is to collaborate with the private sector to establish 18 cassava processing industries with machines that can process 240 tonnes of cassava per day.
President, Nigeria Cassava Growers Association (NCGA), Mr Olusegun Adewunmi, dropped the hint in an interview with newsmen in Abuja yesterday.
Adewunmi said this was in line with the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration, pointing out that the processing industries would create market for cassava.
The objective of the agenda was to generate employment and transform the country into a leading player in global food markets to grow wealth for millions of farmers and make the agricultural sector a business project to promote private investment in agriculture.
The Tide further reports that it will also execute integrated projects through value chain processes, generate employment, and transform Nigeria into a net exporter of agricultural commodities.
Adewunmi said that the cassava growers would have to work really hard to be able to meet the requirement of the processing industries, especially as the country had started exporting cassava grits and chips to China.
He commended the Federal Government for designing the agricultural transformation agenda.
He explained that the agenda had made farmers to partner with banks and not “a master-servant relationship like it used to be in the past”.
“For the first time, a farmer can sit down and make a programme of his own and it is acceptable to the bank and to the government.
“In the past, it was the ministry that will make the programme, but we are glad it is no longer like that. The agenda is working; it is giving us freedom,” he said.
Adewunmi, who observed that the membership of the association had increased to more than one million farmers, said that the membership would be more than 10 million in the next six months.
He said that the issue of cassava glut was also being addressed by the Federal Government’s agricultural programme.
According to him, glut is an act of flooding the market with excess goods so that supply exceeds demand.