Cassava Boom in Southeast Asia

Improved high-starch varieties are boosting Southeast Asia's cassava output while diversification of marketing helps stabilize prices. In Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam, the improved cassava varieties developed by CIAT in collaboration with national researchers have already spread to more than 500,000 hectares. According to CIAT's preliminary but conservative estimates, the new varieties have created benefits of nearly a half billion dollars over the last seven years, mostly for small farmers. At the same time, employment in cassava processing has risen rapidly.

The humble root crop covers 3.9 million hectares in Asia, more than in Latin America, where cassava originated. Because the crop is highly tolerant of drought and infertile soils, it is planted mostly by Southeast Asia's poorest farmers living in marginal uplands, above the more productive lowlands occupied by wet rice.

"We've found that improved varieties of cassava, developed from crosses between local and Latin American germplasm, increase farmers' crop yields by 20 to 40 percent, says Kazuo Kawano, a CIAT cassava breeder. "The roots of the new varieties also have much higher starch contents. Greater starch yields from the same amount of land translate into higher income for farmers who sell cassava to starch processors."

The new varieties resulted from Kawano's longstanding collaboration with national research institutes in a half dozen Asian countries. The Japanese government supported CIAT's cassava research in Asia for more than a decade.

"In just two years, improved varieties developed in Thailand have spread to nearly ten percent of Vietnam's total cassava area of 283,000 hectares, according to Hoang Kim," director of the Hung Loc Agricultural Research Center in Dong Nai province. "Farmers are especially enthusiastic about the varieties in southern Vietnam, where most of our starch processing takes place."

Starch processing in Vietnam is performed both in rural households with traditional methods and by large, modern factories. Most of the starch goes to domestic food processing, mainly into the production of monosodium glutamate, an important flavoring agent, while some is used in the production of textiles, paper, and other products.

Until recently, the Vietnamese considered cassava a crop of last resort. "It has helped Vietnam through at least two major famines since World War II and was a staple of the Vietnamese army during the wars with France and the USA," says Thai Phien of Vietnam's National Institute for Soils and Fertilizers. But now the crop is acquiring a new image as a raw material for industry.

Thailand was the first country to exploit the industrial prospects of cassava on a large scale. Since the 1970s it has exported enormous quantities of dried cassava chips and pellets to the countries of the European Union, which use them in animal feed. More recently, the private sector in Thailand has created new cassava markets by exploiting the crop's potential as a source of cheap starch. According to reports from Kasetsart University in Bangkok, about 50 percent of the country's cassava now goes to starch production. About a third of this is further processed into various modified starches, and half of the total starch production is exported to Taiwan and Japan.

With the benefits of the new varieties have come risks. "In 1995, cassava prices were quite high in Thailand and Vietnam, prompting farmers to expand the area planted," says CIAT agronomist Reinhardt Howeler. "Then, in 1996, prices dropped considerably because of overproduction and declining starch prices in the world market. In Thailand, some growers lobbied successfully for cassava price subsidies."

However, the private sector's continuing efforts to further diversify cassava products and markets are likely to lessen the risks for small scale producers throughout Southeast Asia: "Competing demands for cassava roots should enable growers to obtain better prices," said Howeler. "Continued adoption of improved varieties will further increase their returns from the same amount of land."

To balance its cassava production with industrial demand, Thailand embarked in 1993 on a program to reduce the cassava area by 20 percent and intensify production on the remaining area through massive dissemination of improved varieties. "By 1996, the new varieties had spread to about 384,000 hectares or nearly a third of the country's total cassava area," explains Wilawan Vongkasem of Thailand's Department of Agricultural Extension.

A potential downside of the cassava boom is the fragility of upland soils on which the crop is grown. To meet rising demand, farmers will inevitably intensify production, raising the specter of serious soil erosion, warned Howeler. With a grant from Japan's Nippon Foundation, he is working closely with national institutes and farmers to find ways of making the cassava boom environmentally sustainable.

Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT)