150,000 Nigerian households to eat fortified cassava by 2014-- Institute

CASSAVANEWS to follow 234Next.com By the middle of 2014, more than 150,000 households in Nigeria are expected to be eating vitamin A fortified yellow cassava, an international agricultural organisation, HarvestPlus, said

HarvestPlus is an international partner of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) leading a global effort to breed and disseminate micro-nutrient-rich staple food crops to reduce hunger in malnourished populations.

In a release in Ibadan on Thursday, IITA quoted HarvestPlus as saying that yellow cassava varieties could provide more vitamin A in the diets of more than 70 million Nigerians, who ate cassava everyday.

The release, signed by Godwin Atser, the spokesman for IITA, stated that yellow cassava varieties were already being multiplied through stem cuttings.

It said that by 2013 when sufficient certified stems would be available for HarvestPlus and its partners to distribute to about 25,000 farming households initially.

The release said farmers would be able to grow the new vitamin A varieties and feed their families on them and in addition, multiply and share cuttings with others in the community, thus amplifying the nutritional benefits.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is widely prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa, afflicting almost 20 per cent of pregnant women and about 30 per cent of children under the age of five in Nigeria, the release stated.

It added that VAD could lower immunity and impair vision, leading to blindness and even death.

The release stated that children and women would be the main beneficiaries of these new yellow varieties, which could provide up to 25 per cent of daily vitamin A needs.

It said that varieties with enough vitamin A to provide up to half of daily needs were already in the breeding pipeline and should be ready for release in a few years.

The release said new yellow varieties bred using traditional (non-transgenic) methods by IITA and National Root Crops Research Institute were liked by farmers during field trials.

"Demand for these varieties has already started but it will take some time before we have enough quantities to give out," said Paul Ilona, the HarvestPlus Manager for Nigeria .

Although the cassava initiative is being funded by HarvestPlus, other partners include the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa) and Nigerian government agencies, the release explained.

Cassava, an extremely adaptable crop, is drought tolerant, requires limited land preparation and grows well in poor soils

As part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research Programme on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health, the global initiative is coordinated by CIAT and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Nigeria releases Vitamin A cassava to improve public health

CASSAVANEWS to folow Joy Online from Kofi Adu Domfeh/Luv Fm/Ghana, Last Updated: December 9, 2011. The Nigerian Government has announced the release of three new vitamin A-rich ‘yellow’ cassava varieties that could provide more vitamin A in the diets of more than 70 million Nigerians who eat cassava every day.

The yellow color (cassava is generally white) is due to the higher vitamin A content.

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) is widely prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. It afflicts almost 20% of pregnant women and about 30% of children under-five in Nigeria. VAD can lower immunity and impair vision, which can lead to blindness and even death.

Children and women will be the main beneficiaries of these new yellow varieties, which could provide up to 25% of their daily vitamin A needs. Varieties with enough vitamin A to provide up to half of daily needs are already in the breeding pipeline and should be ready for release in a few years.

These new yellow varieties were bred using traditional (non-transgenic) methods by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Nigerian National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI) and were liked by farmers during field trials.

Cassava is an extremely adaptable crop; it is drought tolerant, requires limited land preparation, and grows well in poor soils. The new yellow varieties are also high yielding and resistant to major diseases and pests.

“Demand for these varieties has already started, but it will take some time before we have enough quantities to give out,” said Paul Ilona, the HarvestPlus Manager for Nigeria.

The yellow cassava is already being multiplied through stem cuttings. In 2013, when sufficient certified stems are available, HarvestPlus and its partners will then distribute these to about 25,000 farming households initially.

Farmers will be able to grow these new vitamin A varieties and feed them to their families. They can also multiply and share cuttings with others in their community, amplifying the nutritional benefits. After the Mid-2014 harvest, more than 150,000 household members are expected to be eating vitamin A cassava.

This work is funded by HarvestPlus. Other partners include the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (Embrapa), and Nigerian Government agencies.

HarvestPlus leads a global effort to breed and disseminate micronutrient-rich staple food crops to reduce hidden hunger in malnourished populations. It is part of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition and Health. It is coordinated by CIAT and the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Cassava News May 8, 2011

Invoke Sun, Wind gods for satisfying energy needs

CASSAVA NEWS to follow The Economic Times .Recently, ET organised a workshop, Energy India 2011: Energy security, climate change and economic development , where it was stressed, inter-alia , that our government is facing tough challenges in meeting energy requirements in an environmentally-sustainable manner. This is true - there is a dire need for exploring sources of energy that are not fossil fuel-based since the latter cause climate change. Because of this concern, we are resorting to producing clean energy such as biofuel, nuclear, wind, solar and hydro power. It may be mentioned, considering world averages, that today , about 70% energy comes from fossil fuel, about 20% from hydro power, and of the remaining 10%, most either comes from nuclear plants and biofuel and an insignificant 0.5% from the sun or wind.

However, these percentages vary from country to country. For example , countries such as Japan, US, Canada, France and Germany produce a large percentage of nuclear power in their energy mix, while India produces a mere 2.5% nuclear energy of its total power production. In the context of choosing a clean energy policy, let us first examine the pros and cone of two forms of clean energies , viz nuclear and biofuel, which are accepted as clean energies. First, consider nuclear energy.

The recent nuclear disaster in Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan has again brought to the fore the harmful aspects of producing nuclear energy on living beings, business and industry , which belies all the talk of sustainable development. Ironically, it has happened in a technically-advanced country while making peaceful use of atomic energy that may prove worse than the havoc of destructive use of atomic energy in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. We had much higher nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl (Ukraine) in 1986 but never learnt the lesson on safety standards of nuclear plants.

Such big tragedies send shock waves in the corridors of power the world over. There is a catalogue of day-to-day leaks of radioactive steam from nuclear plants in all parts of the world that go unreported but are causing slow murder of millions of workers employed there as well as other citizens including people living in neighbouring countries. In India too, we had a small mishap at Narora nuclear plant in 1993, which might have been forgotten by many. Second, let us talk about production of biofuel as many developed countries have passed laws mandating greater use of non-fossil fuel. As a result, crops such as cassava, corn, palm oil and sugar are being diverted in great proportion for biofuel production. China and the US are cases in point.

While China imports 98% of cassava production from Thailand to produce biofuel, the US uses 16% of the world's corn supply - enough to feed 350 million people - to produce ethanol only to be burned in its SUVs. Al Gore , who once supported the policy of ethanol production, now calls it a mistake because the rush for biofuel is driving the food prices . The Food and Agriculture Organization ( FAO )) has asserted that food prices have gone up by 15% during October 2010-January 2011 alone, bringing additional 45 million people below poverty line. The soaring food prices are the cause of political turmoil in Algeria, Egypt and Bangladesh. My intention is not to make a case against production of nukes and biofuel .

However, in view of the above facts, it seems that we should focus more on producing clean energy from wind and sun, which are God's gift to us, and they are renewable sources of energy too. It is true that the cost of production of these energies is high because we do not have efficient technology to produce them on a large scale. To achieve this, we require large investment in R&D of these energies to which, unfortunately, we have not paid sufficient attention. According to scientists and researchers, we would probably need to invest about $100 billion annually for a few decades.

This is about 0.2% of the world's total GDP and is well within the capability of G20 nations that account for about 90% of world's GDP. If rich nations are really serious in saving the planet, some sacrifice needs to be made by them. This is the only way to reduce our dependence on fossil-based energy. The last four Conference of Parties - Bali (2007), Poznan (2008), Copenhagen (2009) and the latest at Cancun (2010) - have not achieved anything worthwhile . Whatever voluntary or legallybinding emission cuts are agreed to, these would be insufficient to keep the rise in global temperature below the threshold limit of 2° C set by the G20.

To sum up, clean and renewable solar and wind energy should constitute a major portion of total energy mix in future. Since, it is not going to happen soon, we should (a) take all safety measures in production of nuclear power by strengthening our laws, (b) take steps that ensure biofuel production does not create food shortage, and (c) enhance hydel power generation by resolving all social, cultural, territorial , livelihood and displacement issues that arise during implementation of projects. All this is relevant in India's context so that our economic growth is not disrupted. The ET seminar did address all these issues and I hope it would infuse innovative thinking for devising suitable clean energy policy by our government.


P P SANGAL
(The author is former director of the CSO and UN consultant on Environment and Poverty Alleviation)

Cassava News April 28, 2011

Vietnam urged to rethink the plan to develop cassava plants

VietNamNet Bridge – Cassava products have been selling like hot cakes. Meanwhile, the consumption is expected to increase further in the next years. However, development programmers still have been called to reconsider the plan to develop cassava plants

The rise of the cassava plants

It is now the second time that Vietnam has witnessed the boom of cassava plant since 1975. The first time occurred during the first years after the country’s union, when the rice and maize output was low. Just within three years, since 1979, the cassava growing area increased by two folds, to the record high of 461,400 hectares, while the output also climbed to the record high of 3.422 million tons.

Later, when Vietnam became a rice export power, cassava plants became less attractive in the eyes of farmers, who preferred to grow rice to earn money.

However, cassava plants, once again, have become “favored” by farmers, which have hindered the development of many other kinds of plants. The cassava growing area has increased by 7.6 percent to 496,200 hectares, while the output has increased by 15.7 percent to 8.522 million tons.

Vietnamese farmers have been rushing to grow cassava because they can see the high demand from the Chinese market.

In 2010, Vietnam exported 1.7 million tons of cassava products in total, of which, China alone consumed 92.4 percent. The percentage was 94.1 percent in the first two months of the year. Fresh cassava has also been carried out continuously to China across the border gates.

Why cassava?

While Vietnamese farmers feel happy with the money they earn from exporting cassava to China, experts have called on to reconsider the plan on developing cassava plants.

Nguyen Dinh Bich, a well known trade expert from the Trade Research Institute, said on Thoi bao Kinh te Saigon, that Vietnam is not the country which has advantages in developing cassava plants for export. In the world, only the countries with large area and thin population density can reserve many areas for growing cassava. This explains why in the world, only four countries have the cassava growing areas of more than one million hectares, namely Nigeria (3.8 million hectares), Brazil (1.8-1.9 million), Thailand (1.3 million) and Indonesia (1.2 million).

Besides Ghana, there are only three other poor countries in the world which have the cassava growing areas exceeding Vietnam’s, including Angola, Tanzania and Mozambique.

Regarding the yield; though Vietnam’s cassava output in 2009 was high at 16.8 tons per hectare, which was much higher than the average yield in the world, the figure is still lower than the average level of 20.2 tons per hectare in Asia and 22.7 tons per hectares in Thailand.

The demand for cassava is believed to increase sharply in the time to come, as enterprises need cassava to make many kinds of products. Cassava is being used in making seasoning powder, used in food industry. Especially, the demand for animal breeding alone is at 1.5 million tons per annum. Besides, Vietnam also has five ethanol factories and tens of other factories making alcohol of different kinds, which also need cassava.

However, Bich has pointed out that Vietnam cannot compete with China, even though the cassava yield has been increasing considerably in recent years. Since the cassava prices have been increasing too sharply, many enterprises have to shift to use other kinds of materials, which explain why the imports of maize and wheat have been increasing rapidly.

The third problem that experts have pointed out to persuade development programmers to put a brake on the cassava growing area development, is that while growing cassavas mostly serve the demand from foreign countries, Vietnam would lack land to develop other important farm produce, because the agriculture land fund will not be enlarged.

Statistics show that while cassava plants see “hot development”, the growing areas of many other kinds of plants has been decreasing. The cotton growing area, for example, has reduced by 6.9 percent per annum, while the sugar cane area by 1.3 percent per annum. Especially, the cashew growing area has been decreasing for the third consecutive years by 11 percent in total

Source: Viet Nam Net to follow TBKTSG

Cassava News April 23, 2011

Cassava research staff receive ‘royalty free’ variety

increasing nutrients in local cassava varieties will make it both accessible and affordable for communities to improve their own nutrition

SPECIAL REPORT BY XINHUA CORRESPONDENT Peter Mutai

CASSAVA NEWS to follow Coastweek.com NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- Kenya’s cassava research has received a financial boost in support of phase II of Bio Cassava Plus (BC Plus), an innovative project that aims to reduce malnutrition by increasing the nutritional value of cassava, a staple crop consumed by millions of Kenyans. The funding 8.3 million U.S. dollars that has been advanced by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) through Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is to help develop cassava with enhanced nutrients. 

“The efforts are aimed at bettering nutrition and enable people live better productive lives,” Dr. Simon Gichuki, Kari’s Biotechnology Director and also the projects principal investigator said late Thursday.

He said that millions of Kenyans, especially children lack essential vitamins and minerals thus contributing to childhood deaths, diseases and blindness.

Gichuki said that the Bio cassava plus is aimed at enhancing cassava with carotene, iron and protein and will be available to farmers without any royalty fees.  “Under this project farmers will freely multiply, save and share their planting materials,” Gichuki noted.

Gichuki observed that millions of Kenyans eat cassava two times a day, hence forcing researchers to focus on increasing the levels of pro-vitamin A and iron in this familiar food to provide them with healthier food that will enhance their diet and improve livelihoods.

He revealed that phase I of the project that was done in the country exceeded all targets to date.   “Using the tools of modern biotechnology we were able to develop cassava plants that are 30 times as much beta-carotene, four times as much iron, and four times as much protein as traditional cassava,” he added.

These increased levels reflect what is needed to provide the minimum daily dietary requirements for a child.

According to Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation President for Global Development Program Ms. Sylvia Burwell, the health of consumers will improve greatly once farmers adapt to the new technology. 

“The variety is to help make substantial improvement to people’s lives,” she observes.  “Beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, and iron are contained in various foods today, but those foods are scarce, unavailable, or too expensive for many people in Kenya,” said Dr. Martin Fregene, the project director. 

He said that increasing nutrients in local cassava varieties will make it both accessible and affordable for communities to improve their own nutrition.

According to statistics at Kenya’s Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, approximately 30 percent of Kenyan pre-school children are vitamin A deficient, in addition to suffering from inadequate iron and protein. 

Effects of iron deficiency include anaemia, death for women in childbirth; and inadequate levels of protein causes stunting and wasting in children below the age of five

Cassava roots are consumed freshly boiled, or processed into a wide variety of granules, pastes and flours.

Additionally, tubers can be left in the ground for up to three years, so if drought or disease kills off other crops, farmer’s families can still fend off starvation by eating cassava.

The project will also be carried out in Nigeria, one of the countries where people consume cassava in large numbers.

Cassava a popular crop in western and coastal region of Kenya has in the past faced attacks from viruses that have reduced its production.

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Financial boost for further cassava research

NAIROBI (Xinhua) -- In northern parts of Kenya most children aged two years weigh between five-six kilograms.

This according to medical personnel is an abnormal occurrence that they attribute to lack of iron that causes deficiency in anaemia, death for women in childbirth.

This condition also leads to inadequate levels of protein that causes stunting and wasting in children below the age of five.

In Africa people often eat cassava two or three times a day, but it contains no vitamin A or iron. As a result, many people suffer from disease caused by a lack of vitamins and other important nutrients.

But this bad picture is set to change following an advancement of 8.3 million U.S. dollars research on cassava that is expected to come up with bio-Cassava, a biofortified variety of cassava that have enormous potential to help millions of people live healthy lives in Kenya and Nigeria.

Bio-Cassava is an opportunity to help people, especially in rural areas throughout Kenya. It will give people vitamins they need through a food they already grow and eat.

The funding has been advanced by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) through Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to help develop cassava with enhanced nutrients.

Known as bio-Cassava Plus (BC Plus), an innovative project that aims to reduce malnutrition by increasing the nutritional value of cassava, a staple crop consumed by millions of Kenyans, the project is set to be launched soon.  “The efforts are aimed at bettering nutrition and is a big boost to agricultural research in this country,” said Simon Gichuki, Kari’s Biotechnology Director and also the projects Principal Investigator observes.

Gichuki notes that millions children in Africa, Kenya included lack essential vitamins and minerals thus contributing to early childhood deaths, diseases and blindness.

Gichuki said that BC Plus is aimed at enhancing cassava with carotene, iron and protein and will be available to farmers without paying any royalty fees.  “The project will use a range of crop breeding techniques, including transgenic approaches,” he notes.

According to President for Global Development Programme of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Ms. Sylvia Burwell, the health of consumers will improve greatly once farmers adapt to the new technology.

To date, the foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative has contributed approximately 1.7 billion dollars to provide millions of small farmers in the developing world the tools and opportunities they need to boost their yields, increase their incomes, and build better, healthier lives.

The Project Director Martin Fregene observes that the beta- carotene, the precursor to vitamin A, and iron are contained in various foods today, but those foods are scarce, unavailable, or too expensive for many people in Kenya. 

He says that increasing nutrients in local cassava varieties will make it both accessible and affordable for communities to improve their own nutrition.

According to statistics at Kenya’s Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, approximately 30 percent of Kenyan pre-school children are vitamin A deficient, in addition to suffering from inadequate iron and protein. 

Effects of iron deficiency include anaemia, death for women in childbirth; and inadequate levels of protein causes stunting and wasting in children below the age of five.

Cassava roots are consumed freshly boiled, or processed into a wide variety of granules, pastes and flours.

Additionally, tubers can be left in the ground for up to three years, so if drought or disease kills off other crops, farmer’s families can still fend off starvation by eating cassava.

Cassava a popular crop in western and coastal region of Kenya has in the past faced attacks from viruses that have reduced its production.

But through interventions by Kari and development partners, the problem has since been brought under control.

Biotechnology allows for precise adjustments to be made that result in improved micronutrient levels.

The approach is a sustainable way to eliminate global health crises caused by low nutrition.

While most people in wealthy nations have easy access to a wide variety of nutritious foods, vitamin supplements, and fortified processed foods, many in poorer nations, majority of whom live in rural areas do not.

They either cannot afford or lack access to the foods they need to avoid malnutrition and its devastating impacts on health.

BC Plus is the largest coordinated research development and deployment program funded for cassava to date involving more than 25 research investigators located on five continents.

Cassava, a staple crop consumed by more than 250 million people in Africa, offers limited nutritional value, leaving both children and adults at risk of severe health problems.

Globally, vitamin A deficiency alone accounts for 670,000 childhood deaths each year and causes 350,000 cases of childhood blindness.

Cassava News April 22, 2011

JP brand set to expand

AGUALTA VALE, St Mary:


CASSAVANEWS to follow Jamaica Gleaner WHEN TROPICAL Storm Gustav devastated the local banana industry in 2008, JP Tropical Foods, the island's largest banana producer, suffered a major setback, to the extent that it suspended exports of the fruit. Three years on, banana cultivation is still the mainstay of the company's operation in Agualta Vale, St Mary; but cassava, sweet potato, and pineapple are gaining ground in terms of the acreage under cultivation.

This is by design, according to Jeffrey Hall, CEO of Jamaica Producers Group Limited, an outgrowth of the lessons learnt from that disaster.

"We decided to reinvent ourselves, and the idea has been to develop very strong brands and diversify our product offering and to strengthen our connection to our community, and we are actually making good progress on all three fronts, which in commercial terms obviously means ensuring our investment in St Mary continues to have value. For us, it's important that the community in St Mary be vibrant, economically grounded," Hall told The Gleaner recently.


He said the group, so far, had three outstanding brands. "We are actually a leader in branded fresh produce because we have branded the banana, and we have taken branded position on fresh fruits, which we see as a commodity item," stated Hall. "The third brand is called JP Simply Fresh, which is adding convenience to the fresh items, and that's where the bammy products fall, and that's just the first in a range of things that we'll be doing in that category," he continued.

Chips galore

Even though banana still occupies most of the land, the presence of pineapple, cassava, and potato has literally altered the landscape of an operation which today provides chips - banana, sweet potato, and cassava - in regular and barbecue offerings, which, with the company's strong marketing thrust, have taken consumers by storm.

"The brands, we are satisfied, are becoming, step by step, entrenched in the Jamaican mindset," said Hall. "The work that you see is taking an agricultural output and making it stand for high quality, excitement, fun, good for your health. That's the brand."

Cassava News April 21, 2011

Gates Backs GM

Kenya - 20 Apr 11 - John Kariuki

CASSAVANEWS to follow Slowfood . Efforts to expand the use of genetically modified (GM) crops in Asia and Africa were given a major boost last week with the announcement of a significant investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pledged $US18.6 million.  

The grant will fund projects aiming to develop modified varieties of rice and cassava, intending to produce greater quantities of one or more nutrients to tackle malnutrition.

Since its beginnings 30 years ago, GM technology has claimed to be able to feed the world and eradicate malnutrition. However in this time, we have only seen the number of hungry and malnourished grow, along with new problems and ramifications of a technology that we do not yet fully understand. While we can transplant a gene from one species to another for its desired characteristics, we cannot yet know how to predict or contain its results.

In Kenya and many other African countries, more and more people are turning to the traditional knowledge of communities as the key to solving problems of nutrition, and see the spread of GM crops as a new sickness of the land. Traditionally, communities have reduced their vulnerability to the effects of climate change and crop failure by relying on biodiversity in food supply. A dry season might destroy maize one year so instead we survive on cassava. With GM crops, which require large surface areas for planting and an intensive monoculture system, we don't have this safety blanket. Diversity in food choices also ensures that diets are varied enough to contain the required macro and micronutrients for good health, reducing the incidence of malnutrition.

As part of the funding, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will support the BioCassava Plus project in Nigeria and Kenya to manipulate an increased production of beta-carotene, iron and protein in cassava which is an important crop in many parts of the world. Several communities in Kenya depend on cassava as a staple food as it survives in adverse conditions. The introduction of BioCassava will interfere with and wipe out farmers’ extensive and tireless efforts to preserve and exchange traditional varieties of cassava that are well adapted to particular local agro-climatic conditions.

Furthermore, by influencing farmers to grow the same variety, the introduction and proliferation of GM crops also pose a problem of freedom, reducing producers’ autonomy by creating economic dependence on seed suppliers. In most cases, GM crops also require high external inputs such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers, which, as well as generating their own threats to human health and the environment, are often out of the financial reach of poor small-scale farmers. This creates a cycle that further impoverishes the farmers and turns them into slaves who are no longer in control of their own destiny, having to turn to the shops at every planting season.

The funding will also have a massive impact on farming autonomy and sustainability in Asia, where it will support the Philippine Rice Research Institute and the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute to engineer GM strains of “golden rice” to provide high levels of beta-carotene to decrease vitamin A deficiency in the local population.

To solve the problems of our times, we need to support and build on indigenous food systems, not stamp on them and wipe them out. The answers lie in the traditional agricultural knowledge that is held in the hearts, minds and hands of our small-scale farmers.


John Kariuki is vice-president of Slow Food International and currently works in his homeland of Kenya on Slow Food’s projects for biodiversity and food sovereignty.

Read Carlo Petrini’s 10 Reasons to Say No to GMOs.

CASSAVANEWS to follow Slowfood
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