…Call for FG’s urgent intervention

Cassava merchants under the aegis of the Pacesetter Premium Cassava Merchants and Value Chain Actors (PAPCAMAVA) in Ogun and Oyo States, have lamented the persistent decline in raw cassava farmgate prices from N220,000 per tonne to N5,000 per tonne between May 2024 to May 2026 representing 97.7% fall.

The merchants said the sharp decline in the commodity’s price has left farmers struggling to recover from basic costs of cultivation and also placed significant pressure on the processors, as well as other stakeholders across the value chain in the last two years.

They, however, called for urgent intervention by the Federal Government to address the situation and avert what they described as the near-total collapse of farmgate prices for raw cassava—a development that threatens the livelihoods of farmers and investors, as well as the country’s long-term food security.

The president of the association, Mrs Kehinde Jokotoye, while raising the alarm at a press conference, yesterday, urged FG to adopt a six-point policy framework to tackle the ongoing crisis in the cassava value chain and establish firm off-taker linkages with starch, ethanol, and high-quality cassava flour (HQCF) processors to strengthen market access for cassava producers.

Jokotoye also advocated for greater macro-policy coherence by government, particularly through the alignment of import tariffs and commodity policies to safeguard and promote domestic cassava processing with the establishment of structured credit facilities that take into account cassava’s 10–14-month biological production cycle.

She emphasized on need to decentralize primary processing as a strategy to reduce the incidence of perishable root gluts and the importance of strengthening collective bargaining and facilitating bulk aggregation through producer platforms to address the increasingly concerning conditions in the cassava market.

Jokotoye attributed the crisis in the cassava value chain to structural imbalances arising from uncoordinated expansion following earlier periods of high prices which resulted in concentrated harvest gluts, compounded by inadequate domestic processing capacity for starch, ethanol, and flour to absorb peak tuber supplies.

She also highlighted the high costs of transportation and mechanized harvesting, which often exceed the farmgate value of the raw crop, as well as competition from cheaper, subsidized grain imports and alternative starch sources, factors that have further weakened industrial demand for cassava.

The president, while analysing the situation,  said a market survey conducted by the organisation showed that the price of cassava root tubers stood at N220,000 per tonne in May 2024, while garri sold for N1,500 per kilogramme at the factory retail price.

She said that by December 2024, the farmgate price of cassava root tubers had fallen sharply to N100,000 per tonne, compared with a factory-gate price of N120,000 per tonne as the decline continued into May 2025, when the farmgate price dropped to N60,000 per tonne, while the factory-gate price stood at N70,000.

Jokotoye further explained that by December 2025, the farmgate price had declined further to N20,000 per tonne, with the factory-gate price at N35,000. By May 2026, the farmgate price had plunged to just N5,000 per tonne, while the factory-gate price stood at N25,000.

She, however, said that despite the huge losses recorded in the market, the association demonstrated its members’ capacity to withstand the market crisis and sustain agricultural production with capacity-building support from GIZ, a German development agency, through its Sustainable Agricultural Systems and Policies (AgSys) project.