Food & Beverages Economic benefits of cassava starch
With Ayo Oyoze Baje
Ca s s a v a (Manihotesculenta) is widely grown in Nigeria, the country considered as the world’s largest producer. According to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture ( IITA) extrapolating from estimates for cassava production in Africa (Scott, Rosegrant, and Ringler, 2000) and (FAO, 2004b), Nigeria’s production was targeted at 60 million tonnes by 2020 from 40 million tonnes in 2005 (IITA, 2002).
Notably, cassava has industrial uses as the basis of a multitude of products, including food, flour, animal feed, alcohol, starches for sizing paper and textiles, sweeteners, prepared foods and bio-degradable products. The productsarederivedfromanumber of forms of cassava, ranging from fresh leaves and roots to modified cassava starch.
On the nutrition front, tapioca flour is useful for making glutenfree bread. Cassava is a calorie-rich vegetable that contains plenty of carbohydrate and key vitamins and minerals. Cassava is a good source of vitamin C, thiamine, riboflavin, and niacin.
Going by the ironic fact that Nigeria is one of the top- ten of crude oil in the world but refines not a drop, yet imports massively from other countries while subjecting the citizens to pay through their noses for what God has endowed us with, the interest here is not the amount of cassava we produce .
Of greater significance is the value that could be added through modern processing, preservation and marketing to utilize their industrial uses. For instance, cassava is used as a raw material in the manufacture of processed food, animal feed and industrial products. According to experts wider utilization of cassava products can be a catalyst for rural industrial development and raise the incomes for producers, processors and traders.
However, although global demand for cassava starch has increased over the past 25 years, it is only in Thailand that cassava has completed the conversion of staple foods to industrial processing products and raw materials. Nigeria shouldtherefore, learn from Thailandwhichshowstheeconomic importance of cassava starch production.”thailand has proven its goal through the use of cheap labor, low-cost transportation and efficient sales of products,” said FAO’S Nebbirutaradio. “If more countries see cassava as a strategy and a basic product of industry, it will benefit the development of their food, agriculture and industrial sectors and promote employment in rural and urban areas.”
Thailand now uses about 50percent of its annual output of cassava roots, about 18 million tons to extract about 2 million tons of starch. Half of them are supplied to the domestic food and non-food industries, and the rest are exported, mainly in Japan and Taiwan, and more and more are exported in the form of high-value starch, modified starch for specific uses.
FAO believes that in the global and domestic starch markets, the key to the future of cassava is the improvement in efficiency and quality and the reduction in production costs. African and Latin American countries need to look at Thailand, the world’s largest producer, to find a successful model for the development of the cassava starch industry. The industry in Thailand began more than 50 years ago and developed rapidly in the 1990s, when trade restrictions drastically reduced the market for Thai dried cassava chips used as livestock feed in Europe.
In the opinion of Industry News publication cassava production countries should increasingly convert this relatively low-cost raw material into high-value starch for domestic and international markets.
In fact, it is estimated that 60 million tons of starch is extracted annually from various cereal, root and tuber crops. With the current annual production of cassava roots in the world reaching about 200 million tons, FAO confirms the economic importance of cassava starch production, believing that by converting relatively inexpensive raw materials into high- value starches, many developing countries can strengthen their economies and increase the income of cassava growers.
Acording to Danilomejía, an agricultural engineer in the FAO: “The cassava can make very good starch. Compared with the starch from most other plants, cassava starch has better transparency and viscosity, it is very stable in acidic food products. It also has good properties of non- food products such as pharmaceuticals and thermoplastic biodegradable plastics.”
It is important to note that cassava starch production is very competitive. As a crop, cassava has advantages in production, such as high yield per unit area, drought tolerance and adaptation to poor land, and great flexibility in planting and harvesting. Its roots contain more starch than almost any other food crop on a dry weight basis, and starch is easily extracted using simple techniques. Export prices are always lower than those of potato, corn and wheat starch produced in the EU and the US. For example, the premium tapioca starch produced in Thailand currently sells for about US$225 per ton.
As a program promoted by IFAD and FAO, the Global Cassava Development Strategy recognizes the importance of processing fresh roots within a market-driven commodity chain to produce byproducts such as starch.
In Africa, with an annual output of more than 100 million tons of roots, there is almost no starch extraction industry except Nigeria and South Africa. “In most countries in tropical Africa, cassava root is a basic staple food, an important reserve for other crop failures and an increasingly economic crop for the urban market,” Nebambi Lutaladio, an expert on root and tuber crops at FAO’S crop and pastures, said.
“Although the starch imported by some countries can be produced locally using cassava, its government has not been able to adjust its policies to encourage the cassava starch production. “There is no tradition of public research and development of tapioca starch value-added production
“In addition, there is no tradition of public research and development in value-added cassava starch production, and the private sector is reluctant to invest in research to improve cassava starch processing technology due to lack of patent protection,” Lutaladio further said.
Experts in cassava production claim that building a modern cassava starch processing plant typically requires $8-10 million in capital and a large amount of additional funds to cover operating expenses for the first few years. At present, private investors lose interest in investment because of the fact that many African farmers use unmodified cassava varieties, the quality of the starch produced is low, and the supply is unstable - farmers prefer to sell fresh produce as food when the market price is higher.
Baje is Nigerian first Food Technologist in the media