REDUCING POVERTY

Surviving the COVID-19 Threat: Cassava Sector

Our cassava-value-chain project enables smallholder cassava farmers and processors to increase their yield, earn more income and employ more persons. This is achieved through the adoption of good farming and business practices; access to quality inputs and extension services; and improved cassava processing technology, funding, and new markets.

Summary of Outcomes in 2020

22,064 Cassava Farmers and MSMEs Reached

22,064 cassava farmers and MSMEs reached by input suppliers and agro-dealers with their adaptive services that helped alleviate their most significant COVID-19 induced challenges—access to market, funding, inputs, and information. This enabled them to take advantage of the late planting season.

17,718 Cassava farmers/processors

Increased their productivity and sales as a result of accessing the services and adopting the practices learnt and consequently raised their income by an additional NGN 2.7 billion.

NGN 1.4 Billion Leveraged

In new investments into the cassava sector from the public and private sectors to implement good agricultural practices and technological innovations.

COVID-19 restrictions hit cassava farmers and processors severely because they occurred at the peak of the main planting season in the region. They were unable to access inputs due to intrastate and interstate movement restrictions. The scarcity led to an increase in the cost of inputs. They faced difficulty sourcing for inputs and getting services from service providers, along with a near-impossible movement of agro-products and market lockups that made buying and selling their produce difficult as the number of off-takers was reduced.

Restrictions on social gatherings prevented them from accessing face-to-face training and demonstrations from service providers. Cassava farmers had to go late to the farm and return early to meet the curfew times. Most banks were closed with only a few branches open, and lenders were reluctant to provide credit due to the perceived high risk occasioned by the uncertain pandemic business environment. Communities canceled market days and controlled the number of sellers per market day, leaving farmers with no place to sell their harvested produce. Cassava farmers could not easily access labor for land preparation. Overall, they faced increased cost and limited availability of input, and inability to take advantage of increased industrial demand for cassava.

The input suppliers and agro-dealers who offer embedded extension services (a class of service providers) adapted their services to ensure continued delivery, even in the face of movement restrictions. They adopted the use of technology and digital agro-tech platforms, the mass media, and radio jingles to communicate with cassava farmers while relying on their members who live close to farming clusters to provide needed services in-person and in observance of all COVID-19 guidelines.

After the restrictions, input suppliers and agro-dealers quickly expanded demonstrations and training activities to farmers to help them take advantage of the late planting season to minimize the disruptive impact of COVID-19 experienced during earlier planting seasons. The input suppliers and agro-dealers assisted cassava farmers with the sale of agro inputs, such as fertilizers and stem varieties.

Stable Supply of Improved Cassava Seeds

Consistent access to and the use of improved cassava seed varieties enhances the productivity of cassava farmers and their subsequent incomes on a sustained basis.

PIND facilitated the scale-up of the consistent access of smallholder farmers to high-yielding, disease-resistant, and disease-free improved cassava seeds. This involved training, certifying, and onboarding 80 new VSEs in the four (4) states of Abia, Akwa Ibom, Cross Rivers, and Delta—who sold over 2,200 bundles of the improved stems in 2020. The VSEs evolved in partnership with BASICS II (Building an Economically Sustainable, Integrated Cassava Seed System II) project through a 2020 tripartite memorandum of understanding between PIND, International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), and National Root Crops Research Institute NRCRI). This effectively bridged the gap between research institutes that constantly develop improved stem varieties and farmers who continually search for better seeds to plant.

MEET THE CASSAVA DOCTOR (BAYELSA STATE)

From 2017 to 2018, PIND has been building the capacity of Mrs. Bari Endurance, an undergraduate mother of four (4), as a (farm service provider (FSP and a village seed entrepreneur VSE) in Bayelsa State. She has since then been training other cassava farmers in Bayelsa State on good agricultural practices, paving the way to also sell spray services and agro-input products like fertilizers to them, including using phone calls to serve her clients in 2020. “As a matter of fact, in my area, they all know me as a Cassava Doctor; they take me as a Cassava Doctor. Any question they have about cassava, they just put me on a phone call and ask: “If my farm is going like this, what should I do?” And I give them the answer. Because of that, I find it very easy to go to those communities for trainings, too. I believe I have reached up to 600 to 700 cassava farmers with training on good agricultural practices. Before I went for that PIND training to become a cassava FSP, I have been farming for about ten (10) to 15 years. And I was just having two (2) persons as staff. Now, gradually, my staff strength is up to five (5). From what I know now, after my trainings, I have the financial confidence in my business—such that if my children are going to school, I don’t need to ask for money or borrow money. It is good to be independent”.