admin | July 16, 2018
In this week’s Farmer story from Tanzania, we learned that high demand is motivating farmers to grow cassava commercially. Our Script of the week suggests that Tanzanian cassava farmers can do even better by adding value to their cassava.
Often, farmers don’t make enough money to support themselves and their families when they sell their produce. This happens for many reasons, including poor markets, inadequate farming or marketing skills, and inadequate capacity to add value to their produce.
Cassava is one crop that can earn farmers a good income if they add value to it. A renewed interest in cassava and cassava by-products led to the recent development of new harmonized guidelines for processing cassava flour in East and Central Africa.
This script explains how to make cassava flour according to the new standards.
In the script, we meet Mrs. Bridget Shenyagwa, who created a factory that processes high quality cassava flour. The factory not only provides her with a ready market for the cassava she grows, but also provides employment and income for local farmers.
You could use this script as inspiration to research and write a script on processing and marketing cassava flour in your area. If you choose to use this script as background material or as inspiration for creating your own program, talk to cassava farmers, cassava processors, and other key players in the local agriculture sector in your country.