The simple things we see are the most valuable items and commodities. Despite this fact, we fail to see the great potentials of these items and spend our time and money trying to invest in other items. In agriculture, the worthiness of a crop is how it is able to break into the market and present itself as a valuable commodity to transform the live of a farmer, create more employment opportunities and generate wealth to contribute to the robustness of the economy. In this current age, it is disappointing to plant or grow cassava and make less income or experience post-harvest losses when value can be added to it. We all know that when value is added to a crop, there is value and worth on that particular crop and cassava also presents this opportunity to the farmer. Farmers can make millions and billions out of cassava when the concept of value addition is inculcated.
WHY CONSIDER CASSAVA CULTIVATION?
Cassava cultivation has become a ground-breaking opportunity for a lot of farmers due to its availability of a ready market when value is being added to it. Some of the notable value-added products for cassava include cassava starch, tapioca, cassava livestock feed, glucose, syrups, cassava adhesive, garri, ethanol, among others. Adding value to cassava into these set of products means there is the avoidance or the condition of post-harvest losses and much income generated.
SPOTLIGHT ON CASSAVA STARCH
Cassava starch is used in food processing. Food processors find this commodity very important and place a high demand on them locally and internationally. In food processing, cassava starch is used as thickener, binder, stabilizer, expanding agent, and sweetener. Many food processing companies prefer using cassava starch in their products in order to call for more value and worth when processed from the raw cassava.
Interestingly, cassava starch is used in the paper industry. This commodity can be used for a lot of things such as improving the paper quality, improving the production rate and pulp utilization. In the paper industry, it serves as a binding agent to produce a white high-grading paper and smooth one. In the case of trying to risen the paper strength, cassava starch can be used as a sizing agent.
Also, cassava starch can be applied in biodegradable materials productions. International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) revealed that starch foam is one of the major starch-based packaging materials. ISHS has stated that “Experimental studies have demonstrated that cassava starch could be used for making various types of packaging materials”. In tropical and subtropical regions, cassava as a source of starch is a potential raw material for the development of biodegradable materials.
In the beverage industry, cassava starch is very important and is used as sweeteners during processing. Combining cassava starch with other sweeteners gives the beverage a good taste.
CONCLUSION
Generally speaking, cassava starch is widely used and consumed. It has a ready and available market for all producers all over the world. In terms of its use, cassava starch can be used as sweeteners, binding agents, among others in food processing companies. It is highly used in paper industries and biodegradable materials. It is however recommended that farmers engage investors in investing into their farms by building factories for processing cassava into starch.
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