CIAT 2016

Some crops have it easy. They’re planted, they grow, they’re harvested and, finally, they’re eaten. No such luck with cassava. Cassava, as food, at the very least must be cooked in order to remove certain toxins. More interesting, however, is that cassava serves as a basis for the manufacture of many by-products ranging from chips as feed to processed food, starch and alcohol.

When many people hear the word cassava, they immediately think of a subsistence crop. Is this really the case? It depends on who you ask.

“Cassava is not a subsistence crop anymore. The role of cassava in development is not so much for food production…” James went on to say that production of cassava is actually for income and, “In fact, the role of cassava in the future is very much related with income generation for the rural sector.” (James Cock, CIAT emeritus scientist)

Though cassava has so much potential, it exists among many different potential substitute commodities. Cassava and its by-products may serve as substitutes if they are more competitive than other products based on relative price. Knowing these dynamics is key to advance the development of the use of the crop as well as the cassava industry as a whole. As trends in cassava trade may affect everyone from the smallholder cassava farmer to the large industrial cassava grower, information regarding cassava trade and the corresponding value chains becomes very important. This becomes especially true because there is a great deal of regional variation in the structures associated with cassava value chains, agricultural policy, as well as the required environmental and agronomic practices.

In recent years, several countries in Asia have emerged both as key producers and consumers of cassava, specifically cassava chips and starch. In Latin America and Africa, cassava has been a key crop for both subsistence and economic purposes, but in very different ways. Why are these regions so different?

According to James, it’s clear that cassava is a “flex crop” both in terms of its potential uses as well as the role that it serves for its producers. The specific uses of cassava may vary by both level of development as well as the regions in which it is grown. It may initially serve as a subsistence crop, providing at the same time the opportunity to shift to serving as the primary input for the commercialization of multiple off-farm products. In much of Southeast Asia and the southern tropics of Latin America, cassava is already widely produced for industrial uses (see examples here: Brazil talk, CODIPSA, Africa, Asia).

See http://blog.ciat.cgiar.org/cassava-subsistence-crop-or-trendy-commodity/