Where does cassava come from?

In 2024 Nigeria produced 62.6 million tonnes, 18% of the world's 341.6 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) followed with 14%, then Thailand (8.4%), Ghana (8.2%) and Brazil (5.6%). The top five account for 54%, 97 countries reported a crop and 27% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +18% over the ten years to 2024 and +1% on the previous year.

That ranking hides two industries that share a plant. In Nigeria, DR Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo) and Ghana, cassava is a food staple grown on smallholdings, processed in small mills and eaten within the district. In Thailand it is an industrial raw material grown in blocks for starch factories and chipping yards.

The crop grows where the climate is frost-free and the soil too acid or exhausted for maize or rice. It sets no fixed harvest date: roots can be lifted from about eight months to two years after planting, so a standing field doubles as a store, and it is what farmers fall back on when the cereal harvest fails.

Cambodia was the largest exporter of cassava (HS 0714) in 2024 with 20% of world export value, ahead of Thailand (15%), on world trade of $3.4 billion (CEPII BACI). Thailand was the largest importer with 18%.

Set that trade value against the tonnage above and the gap is the whole story. A lifted root spoils within a day or two and carries cyanogenic compounds that must be processed out, so almost nothing crosses a border fresh; what moves is dried chips, pellets, flour and pearls.

The exporters are therefore the countries that built factories, not those that grow the most. Cambodia, Thailand and Laos ship chips into Vietnam and China for starch plants, distilleries and feed mills, while Africa barely appears. Native cassava starch sits under a separate heading, so this understates the processed trade.

There is no futures market for cassava and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. The crop is bought at the farm gate by the tonne of fresh root at a price set locally: by a starch factory or chipping yard quoting a delivered price in Asia, or by traders buying for African food markets. Private services assess chip and starch prices, behind subscriptions.

What a factory pays turns on starch content and haulage distance. Roots are tested on arrival and the price adjusted from a reference starch level, which is why a loaded truck loses money by the hour. Governments intervene through grower price schemes, chip tariffs and ethanol mandates. Where no factory bids, the local food market sets the price.

Factories pay on measured starch, and a root loses starch quickly once out of the ground, so value drains away within days. That fixes a haulage radius around every plant, usually hours rather than days, and a breakdown or a blocked road destroys value permanently.

Southeast Asian chips go overwhelmingly to Chinese starch plants, distilleries and feed mills, where cassava competes directly with domestic corn. When Chinese corn is cheap or state reserves are released, cassava buying slows and regional prices sag whatever the size of the crop.

Cassava is planted from stem cuttings, so a diseased field supplies the next one and viruses travel in the stakes farmers trade. Cassava mosaic disease cuts root yield and cassava brown streak disease rots the root itself, and neither has a chemical control.

A crop planted this season can be lifted any time between roughly eight months and two years later, so growers answer a price move by delaying or advancing the harvest rather than by changing area. That flattens short swings and makes area a poor guide to output.

Cassava sits close to both food security and fuel policy, so governments intervene. Chip tariffs, ethanol blending mandates, rules requiring millers to put cassava flour in bread and grower price supports have all moved the crop, and change faster than planting can follow.

Cassava is a woody shrub grown as an annual and propagated from stem cuttings, not seed. Cuttings go into ridges at the start of the rains, the plant builds a canopy and then thickens its storage roots, and harvest is by hand: the stem cut, the plant levered up, the roots snapped off.

Every root contains cyanogenic glycosides that release hydrogen cyanide when the tissue is damaged, and processing exists to remove them. Sweet varieties are peeled and boiled. Bitter varieties, which yield more and resist pests better, are grated, pressed, fermented and dried or roasted. Gari, attieke and chikwangue are outcomes of that detoxification, and shortcuts in famine have caused konzo, a permanent paralysis.

The industrial route runs the other way. Roots are washed, rasped to break open the cells, and the starch washed out, dewatered and dried; or the root is chipped, sun dried and pelleted. Both must begin within days, which is why factories sit in the growing area, not at the port.

Most of the world's cassava is eaten, as boiled root, fermented doughs, and flours and granules such as gari and farinha. The industrial share becomes starch for paper, textiles and food thickening; glucose syrup and monosodium glutamate; fuel ethanol; and dried chips for animal feed. Tapioca pearls are a small corner of the same stream.

By-products are used close to the plant. Peels and the pulp left after starch extraction go to livestock, leaves are eaten as a protein-rich vegetable in central Africa, and stems are kept as planting material. Starch wastewater carries cyanide and must be treated.

There are two chains. The African one is short and informal: roots reach a village processor within a day, and the gari or flour goes to a town market by truck. The binding constraint is processing capacity near the field, not transport to a port.

The Asian chain is industrial. Roots are hauled to chipping yards and starch factories inside the growing districts, then chips move to ports such as Laem Chabang and Sihanoukville and into China. Cambodia and Laos send much of their root across the border into Thai and Vietnamese factories, so the exporter of the chip often did not grow it.

The structural weakness is concentration at both ends. Planting material is vegetative, so a virus travels through a region in the stakes farmers exchange. At the far end the trade leans on one buyer, and a shift in Chinese corn prices reaches Cambodian farm gates within weeks.