Description
Cassava is the most important root crop in Nigeria. Apart from being a staple crop in both rural and urban household’s cassava is a major source of income to cassava farmers and processors in the rural areas.
Cassava alone contributes about 45% of agricultural GDP in Nigeria for food or domestic purposes but its industrial processing and utilization has been very limited.
Currently, the country produces about 40,000,000 tons of the cassava tubers annually and due to the desire of the federal government to reduce import dependency and conserve of scare foreign exchange, there is need to increase the production of cassava starch as an alternative to corn starch.
Cassava starch is a whitish, powdery material which is used in the food, pharmaceutical pulp and paper and textile industries.
In the past, cassava starch was mainly used as a staple food by some tribes in Nigeria and for domestic laundry purposes. However, attention has been drawn to its industrial uses in recent years. Among its industrial uses are: as thickener or paste in the food industry; syrup in the pharmaceutical industry and for textile sizing in the textile industry.
Garri, a product gotten from the processing of cassava tubers is a very important staple food item in Nigeria. It is one of the food items that defy socio-economic class, religious and ethnic boundaries, it is doubtful if it is not eaten daily in one of every two homes in the country.
This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a mechanized cassava farm and garri / cassava starch production plant in Nigeria using cassava tubers as basic raw material.
The size and locations of the farms is one thousand, seven hundred (1,700) hectares of land located in Edo State. One thousand, five thirty (1,530) hectares would be used for the farm while the remaining one hundred and seventy (170) hectares would be used for the construction of the production facility and other civil works. Improved cassava stem (TME 419) would be used in the farm and a yield of twenty (20) tons yield per hectare was assumed.
The proposed plant would comprise of Cassava Starch Plant, Garri Production Plant, Generator, Wagon Balance (Weight bridge), Transformer and Electrical Poles, Weighing Machine, Wood Pallets, AGO storage tank and Forklift. Other equipment’s includes five (5) delivery trucks, Eight (8) New John Deer tractor, Motorised Knapsack Sprayer, Cassava harvesting machines, cassava planting machines, disc harrows and stump removals.
The production capacity of the proposed plant is twenty (20) tons per day for the cassava starch and ten (10) tons per day for the garri plant at 80% of the installed capacity and working for 300 days per annum. The plant would operate for ten (10) hours per day and the input / output ratio of 4:1 was assumed for the cassava starch and garri.
