Nigeria: Government target 51m MT of cassava production by 2017
Speaking in Abeokuta during a training workshop on quality management systems for flash dried quality cassava production, the minister said: "Our target is to increase cassava production by 2017 to 51million metric tonnes, presently we are between 38million and 40million metric tonnes."
On support and upgrade of equipment for Small and Medium Enterprise (SME), he said the federal government had bulk sum of about N3.4bn deposited with the Bank of Industry that is disbursing the fund to target people that included the Master Bakers and SMEs producing the high quality Cassava flour.
According to the minister, the importance of the technical skills and training workshop was to create markets for the farmers and catchment areas for their market, saying this should be between 30 and 50 kilometer radius.
He added: "We are here for the production of cassava flash drive high quality cassava marsh. When we talk of flash drive, we mean the type of equipment used that is: the grated, pressed cassava marsh introduced into the processing machine."
Adeshina stated that the quality management training was basically introduced in terms of skill development and business development to improve upon capacity of the existing SME.
Source: thisdaylive.com