It is no longer a news that Cassava commands more value in the dry season than the raining season either as being sold as raw tubers or finished products. In fact, the Cassava finished products are more favoured in quality and quantity output in the dry season than the raining season.
In spite of the numerous dry season advantages, harvesting of Cassava tubers; which also determines processing volume across different value addition areas is more common or popular in the wet season than the dry season, thereby deterred the chances of fully harnessing the investment opportunities.
For a cassava farmer, who has ready-to-harvest cassava on his farm during the dry season in December or January, and prefer to keep the tubers until the beginning of raining season in March or April, he should be aware that a stand of cassava plant that weigh 2.5 kg in that dry season of December may command more market value than same stand that eventually weigh 3kg at the onset of raining season.
And for processors, a pick-up load of cassava tuber, weighing 2.7 tons averagely that yielded 10 bags of fermented white garri (with 22 custard rubbers per bag weighing 65kg averagely) in the dry season will hardly yield 9 bags in the raining season. Also, same quantity of tubers that yielded up to 65 bags of wet fufu (weighing 33kg averagely per bag) in the dry season will hardly produce 40 -45 bags in the wet season. This is aside the fact that the physical quality output in terms of facial outlook, rising property etc are far better in the dry season than raining season. High yield potential, improve quality attributes and ease of operations experience with garri and fufu production in the dry season is also applicable to other domestic and industrial cassava products.
Many of the operational challenges common with garri and fufu production are more peculiar to the wet season than the dry season. Surprisingly also – to favour dry season operation, selling prices of cassava products is always higher than what is obtainable in the wet season. This is more due to the fact that there is higher availability and lower cost of tubers in the wet season, resulting from many farmers harvesting their produce at the same time.
One of the challenges that farmers attribute to the low harvest rate during the dry season is due to the fact that the soil is intensely hardened, which make uprooting very difficult, tedious and laborious, consequently causing wastages of up to 10% – 15% tubers lost to breakages in the soil. Also, farmers often pay additional 35% to 50% to harvest same size of the farmland in the dry season when compare with raining season harvest cost.
Another major reason why farmers prefer to delay cassava harvesting till raining season is for them to have stem cuttings for planting in the new year cultivation, rather than buying or depending on other farms to source for the cuttings. To me, I will say, rather than holding the entire farm down because of stem cuttings and end up denying oneself of opportunity of reaping the market while it is ripened, one can as well sell off the lots at the price peak in the dry season and reserve a unit part of the entire farm for stem cutting utilization for new planting.
Considering the tremendous benefits associated with dry season cassava harvesting, I am of the opinion that farmer should endeavour to follow deliberate practices that would enable them harvest with ease during the season. One is to plan their planting in such a way that the farm would be ready for harvest during the dry season. Such cassava farms, that are planted be around September, October and November would be ready for harvest between November to January of the following season. One other advantage of planting around this time when rainfall is subsiding is that the rate of weeding is drastically reduced and the farm would have formed good canopies that will reduce weed growth by the time the new raining season begins.
If a farmland was well ploughed or ridges were made, the stress or loss due to breakages, that is often encounter during dry season harvesting would be significantly reduced. Sandy soil with loose texture as obtainable in a typical rain forest will also be easy to harvest even in the dry season. One may just have to compensate the labourers engaged for the harvesting to pay extra attention, using cutlass to loosen up the soil at the plant edges a bit before exerting force to uproot the tubers. I recently saw a video of a simple tool being used to uproot cassava on the farm with far lesser human energy exertion. Such tools, which can be built by local fabricators could be deployed for usage in the dry season harvesting.
For a large-scale cassava farm, future should be looking towards an advanced farm wetting system, whereby a water tank attached to a tractor is engaged to adequately wet a ploughed cassava farm prior to the deployment of a mechanical harvester. The cassava stems would have been cut-off to a minimal height and packed away from the farm land. The mechanical wetting and harvesting could be done simultaneously or some hours apart.
Beyond the economic value and quality attributes associated with harvesting and processing cassava during the dry season, the general importance of crop to the food security of our nation and the economy at large, we should not allow the challenges of harvesting during the dry season to limit access to adequate quantity supply to feed our processing demands.
As long as we can think around the challenges, solutions to adopt for mitigations will always suffice; which can be perfected over time.
God no go shame us.
Kazeem Lamidi
WhatsApp – https://wa.me/2348100975775
Selar Platform – https://selar.co/m/FarmHouse
Kazeem Lamidi is Chief Executive at FarmHouse.
