Description
Cassava is one of the most important root crops in Nigeria. Apart from being a staple crop in both rural and urban house-holds cassava is a major source of income to cassava farmers and processors in the rural areas.
Nigeria is currently the world leading producer of cassava, producing about forty million {40,000,000} Mt. per annum and cassava alone contributes about 5 % of agricultural GDP in Nigeria for food or domestic purposes but its industrial processing and utilization has been very limited.
Since the return to civil rule in 1999, Nigeria has witnessed steady but minimal growth of the middle class. These growth continues to drive the increasing social and health awareness of the need for hygienically well prepared foods required for good quality living standard of people.
This coupled with the geometrically exploding population and continued rural-urban drift continues to fuel the demand for food stuffs especially Garri, a staple food in the country. Over 60% of harvested cassava in Nigeria is used for the production of Gari.
This report seeks to examine the financial viability or otherwise of establishing a cassava farm and garri production plant in Nigeria using cassava tubers as basic raw material. In Nigeria, mechanized cassava cultivation and processing is still on the development stage and the potential is very high.
The size and locations of the farms is seven hundred (700) hectares of land located in Edo State. Six hundred (600) hectares would be used for the farm while the remaining one hundred (100) 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 Garri Plant, Generator, Wagon Balance (Weight bridge), Transformer and Electrical Poles, Weighing Machine, Wood Pallets, AGO storage tank and Forklift. Other equipment’s includes delivery trucks, 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 ten (10) tons per day for the cassava plant at 85% 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 garri.