Facilitating Smallholder Farmers’ Market Access

In the OIC Member Countries

Given the importance of cassava and cocoa for domestic consumption and exports,

respectively, smallholder farmers’ participation in markets for these two commodities is

examined in more detail below.

Smallholders’ participation in the main crop markets

ASSAVA

Nigeria is the world’s largest cassava producer; at about 45 million tons, national cassava

production represents about 18 percent of global production.

From about 1990, after a

Presidential Initiative on domestic food security focused attention on cassava’s potential

as a foreign exchange earner, cassava production increased rapidly to exceed domestic

consumption. Nigeria exports cassava mostly in the form of starch and dried cassava,

primarily to other African and Asian countries.

The Nigerian cassava market consists of a more traditional, food-oriented market and a

newly emerging industrial market, which uses cassava to produce pharmaceutical

products, feed, and confectionary flour.

More than 90 percent of processed cassava is

used by small-scale entrepreneurs to make traditional foods (

gari,

fufu

Cassava can be

left in the field for a long time, but once harvested, the roots are susceptible to rapid

physiological deterioration; after about 48 hours, they have little market value. Waxing or

storage in plastic bags following the application of fungicide can delay deterioration, but

fresh cassava generally cannot be transported and marketed over long distances. The

bulkiness of cassava roots and the costs of loading and unloading them add to the difficulty

of transporting them.

Cassava contains up to 70 percent water. It also contains cynogenic glycosides and

requires effective processing to be safe for consumption. Processing greatly reduces its

bulk and extends its shelf-life, but processing facilities must be located in villages close to

production centers. Cassava processing is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Small-scale

processors operate with marginal profitability, because they cannot obtain credit to buy

better processing equipment or improve inadequate storage facilities, which contribute to

large post-harvest losses. The capacity for farmers to chip, grind, and dry cassava

effectively at the farm level would add value and facilitate marketing to bulk purchasers.

In the dry cassava value chain, cassava is processed into flour and starch and sometimes

further processed into industrial flour, starch, feedstuffs, and glucose, among other

products. With additional processing, cassava can be transformed into ethanol. If cassava

is to undergo transformation for higher-end markets, its quality must be high. Even

industrial processing is only marginally profitable, owing to difficulties with financing,

poor transportation, shortages of raw material, high production costs, and low demand for

FAO (2014).

Liverpool et al. (2009).

UNIDO, CBN, and BOI (2010).