# Where do yams come from?

Source: Commodity Origins, https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/yams/ — data JSON: https://commodityorigins.com/data/commodities/yams.json — license CC BY 4.0 (upstream data keeps its license; see Sources below).

Yams come mainly from Nigeria, which produced 65.3 million tonnes in 2024, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana (11%), Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (8.3%) and Benin (3.6%) follow; the top five together supply 95%. The biggest exporter of yams (HS 071430) is Ghana (25% of world export value in 2024, CEPII BACI). Yams need a long single rainy season, deep friable soil and a great deal of hand labor, and the belt running from Ivory Coast through Ghana, Togo and Benin into Nigeria is where that combination meets a food culture built around pounded yam.

*A large tropical tuber, grown overwhelmingly in the west African yam belt and eaten pounded.* Also called: yam, white yam, puna yam.

## Where do yams come from?

| Rank | Country | Production 2024 (tonnes) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nigeria | 65.3 million | 71% |
| 2 | Ghana | 10.1 million | 11% |
| 3 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | 7.7 million | 8.3% |
| 4 | Benin | 3.4 million | 3.6% |
| 5 | Togo | 982,384 | 1.1% |
| 6 | India | 977,000 | 1.1% |
| 7 | Cameroon | 541,648 | 0.6% |
| 8 | Colombia | 408,944 | 0.4% |
| 9 | Papua New Guinea | 385,041 | 0.4% |
| 10 | Guinea | 326,092 | 0.4% |
| | Rest of world | 0 | 2.6% |
| | World | 92.4 million | 100% |

Source: FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024.

In 2024 Nigeria produced 65.3 million tonnes, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana followed with 11%, then Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) (8.3%), Benin (3.6%) and Togo (1.1%). The top five account for 95%, 60 countries reported a crop and 2.6% came from outside the top ten. World production changed +42% over the ten years to 2024 and +3% on the previous year.

That is the tightest concentration of any major food crop on this site, and the reason is as much cultural as agronomic. Yam is the prestige food of west Africa, the center of harvest festivals and marriage gifts, and it earns a price that repays the labor it takes. Elsewhere [cassava](/commodities/cassava/) fills the same niche far more cheaply.

The crop wants a long wet season, deep soil a tuber can push into and no waterlogging, which places it in the forest-savanna transition rather than the wet forest or the dry north. It is also grown from its own harvest: roughly a quarter to a third of the tubers lifted are held back as seed, so area is capped by last season's crop.


## Who exports and imports yams?

### Exporters of yams, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried (HS 071430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ghana | $63.3 million | 25% |
| 2 | Jamaica | $52.8 million | 21% |
| 3 | China | $27.3 million | 11% |
| 4 | Japan | $20.6 million | 8.2% |
| 5 | Costa Rica | $18.3 million | 7.2% |
| 6 | United States | $18 million | 7.1% |
| 7 | Colombia | $11.4 million | 4.5% |
| 8 | Brazil | $10.8 million | 4.3% |
| 9 | India | $6.6 million | 2.6% |
| 10 | Vietnam | $4.1 million | 1.6% |
| 11 | Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) | $3 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | Italy | $2 million | 0.8% |
| 13 | France | $1.6 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Netherlands | $1.5 million | 0.6% |
| 15 | Thailand | $1.1 million | 0.4% |

### Importers of yams, fresh, chilled, frozen or dried (HS 071430), 2024

| Rank | Country | Value (US$) | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | United States | $121.3 million | 48% |
| 2 | Canada | $33.7 million | 13% |
| 3 | United Kingdom | $20.6 million | 8.1% |
| 4 | Other Asia, nes | $12.1 million | 4.8% |
| 5 | France | $12 million | 4.7% |
| 6 | Japan | $7.8 million | 3.1% |
| 7 | Netherlands | $7.5 million | 3% |
| 8 | Malaysia | $5.5 million | 2.2% |
| 9 | Singapore | $5.2 million | 2% |
| 10 | United Arab Emirates | $3.9 million | 1.5% |
| 11 | Mali | $2.9 million | 1.2% |
| 12 | South Africa | $2.2 million | 0.9% |
| 13 | Italy | $1.5 million | 0.6% |
| 14 | Germany | $1.3 million | 0.5% |
| 15 | Australia | $1.2 million | 0.5% |

Source: CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601).

Ghana was the largest exporter of yams (HS 071430) in 2024 with 25% of world export value, ahead of Jamaica (21%), on world trade of $252.3 million (CEPII BACI). United States was the largest importer with 48%.

Set that against production and the crop is almost entirely non-traded. Nigeria grows most of the world's yams and exports very little; Ghana leads the export table on a fraction of the tonnage because it built the grading, packing and phytosanitary systems the trade requires.

Two different products share this heading. Most of the value is white Guinea yam moving to west African, Caribbean and Latin American communities in North America and Europe. The Chinese and Japanese entries are a separate species, the slender Chinese yam eaten in east Asia and traded within its own region.


## What do yams cost?

### How they are priced

There is no futures market for yams and no free public benchmark price, so this site quotes none. In most rural markets yams are sold by the tuber rather than by weight, in heaps or hundreds, and size, shape and variety matter as much as mass. Wholesale markets in Lagos, Accra and Abidjan set the reference traders work back from.

The price follows a sharp annual cycle. Barns fill at harvest and prices fall; through the dry season stored tubers sprout, lose weight and rot, supply thins and prices climb until the new crop arrives. Traders who store well earn that spread. Export sales are priced by the carton against a size and grade specification agreed with the importer.


## What moves the price of yams?

### The cost of seed tubers

Yams are planted from tubers, and what goes into the ground cannot be eaten or sold. A large share of every harvest is held back as seed, so a bad year cuts the next season's area directly, and a tuber good enough to plant is worth more than one sold as food.

### Hand labor and staking

Mounding, planting, staking the vine, weeding and lifting are all done by hand, and stakes have grown scarce as woodland is cleared. Where labor is short or wages rise, yam area gives way to cassava, which asks far less of a farmer.

### Losses in barn storage

Tubers are cured and stacked in ventilated barns, where they respire, sprout and rot through the dry season. The rate of loss decides how much of the harvest survives to the hungry months, and a hot store or a beetle infestation turns a good crop into a thin one.

### Rainfall timing

The tuber bulks late in the season, so rain that stops early cuts weight even where the crop looked healthy. Because the cycle runs most of a year and smallholder irrigation is uneconomic, a badly timed dry spell also shrinks the seed tubers that plant the next crop.

### Disease in farm-saved planting material

Yams are propagated vegetatively, so anthracnose, nematodes and yam mosaic viruses build up in farm-saved setts and degrade yields over successive cycles. Clean seed schemes reach few growers, and a farmer buying cheap setts in a rural market may be buying next season's disease with them.

## How are yams produced?

Yam is a climbing vine that stores starch in an underground tuber. Setts, small whole tubers or pieces cut from larger ones, go into mounds as the rains begin, the vine is trained up a stake, and the tuber bulks over roughly seven to eleven months before the leaves die back.

Harvest is careful work. Tubers are dug out and lifted whole, because a bruise becomes a rot in storage. Some systems take an early first harvest from the top of the tuber and leave the plant to form a second, smaller tuber used as seed. Lifted tubers are cured in shade to seal wounds.

Storage rather than processing is the norm. Tubers go into a barn of vertical poles, shaded and ventilated, and are inspected through the season. Where processing happens it is drying and milling into yam flour, plus a smaller trade in instant pounded yam flour.


## What are yams used for?

Almost all of it is eaten. Tubers are boiled and pounded into a smooth elastic dough eaten with soup, or fried, roasted or cooked into pottage. Yam flour keeps far longer than the tuber and is the main processed form, and instant pounded yam flour has taken a share of urban kitchens and the diaspora trade.

By-products are modest and local. Peels and spoiled tubers go to livestock, small tubers become next season's seed, and vines are left as mulch. Wild Dioscorea species were once the industrial source of diosgenin for steroid synthesis, a use since served by other routes.


## Supply chain and chokepoints

The domestic chain is short. Tubers move from field to barn, then by head-load or small truck to a rural assembly market, and by lorry to city wholesale markets where they are sold in heaps. Damage in transit is the main loss, because tubers travel loose.

The export chain is a different operation. Tubers are selected for size and shape, cured, sometimes waxed, packed in cartons and moved in refrigerated containers or by air to North America and Europe. It demands cold storage, phytosanitary certification and consistent grading, which is where Nigeria's attempts have repeatedly stumbled and Ghana's investment has paid.

The structural weaknesses are seed and storage. Because planting material comes off the farm, disease accumulates and any shock to the harvest carries into the next year's area. Because the crop is stored rather than processed, much of it is lost to respiration and rot before it is eaten.


## Timeline

- 1967: IITA is founded at Ibadan. The institute built the germplasm collection and breeding program that most later work on yam varieties and clean planting material has drawn on. (https://www.croptrust.org/knowledge-hub/partners/genebank/international-institute-for-tropical-agriculture-iita/)
- 2011: A seed yam program starts in Nigeria and Ghana. Funded research targeted the crop's central constraint, the cost and disease load of farm-saved planting material, rather than the plant itself. (http://blogs.iita.org/yiifswa-holds-annual-progress-review-and-work-planning-and-tac-meetings/)
- 2017: Nigeria launches a formal yam export program. The attempt exposed the gap between growing yams and exporting them: cold chain, curing and grading, not tonnage, are what the export trade requires. (https://www.vanguardngr.com/2017/10/negative-reports-affect-nigerias-yams-export/)
- 2019: Genomics places yam domestication in west Africa. Sequencing showed the cultivated white Guinea yam descends from a forest species domesticated in the Niger basin, confirming the yam belt as the crop's cradle. (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6527260/)
- 2022: Ghana is confirmed as the largest exporter. A country with a fraction of Nigeria's production took the top of the export table by meeting importer standards, overtaking Jamaica in the diaspora markets. (https://shippers.org.gh/index.php/ntes-2021-report-ghana-leads-yam-export-globally/)
- 2022: Review quantifies barn storage losses. Documenting how much of the Ghanaian crop is lost to weight loss, rot and insects between harvest and sale put storage ahead of yield as the binding problem. (https://www.intechopen.com/chapters/83160)
- 2024: Gene editing targets the staking problem. A project to breed bushy yam plants aims to remove the stakes and hand labor that make the crop expensive, and to open the way to mechanized production. (https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/ged/article/default.asp?ID=21040)

## Frequently asked questions

### which country produces the most yams

Nigeria produced 65.3 million tonnes in 2024, 71% of the world's 92.4 million tonnes (FAOSTAT). Ghana was second with 11%, and the top five together accounted for 95%. Almost all of that crop is eaten in west Africa rather than exported, because yams are heavy, labor-intensive and stored rather than processed.

### what is the difference between a yam and a sweet potato

They are unrelated plants. True yams are Dioscorea species with rough, bark-like skin and starchy white or yellow flesh, grown mainly in west Africa. Sweet potatoes are in the morning glory family, usually orange-fleshed and sweet. In American supermarkets orange sweet potatoes are often labeled yams, which is a marketing habit, not botany.

### why does ghana export more yams than nigeria

Because exporting yams needs curing, grading, cold storage and phytosanitary certification rather than volume. Ghana built that capacity for the diaspora markets in the United States, Canada and Britain and led the world export table by 2024, while Nigeria grows far more and eats nearly all of it.

### why are yams so expensive

Because the crop is labor-intensive at every step and partly eats itself. Mounding, staking, weeding and lifting are done by hand, roughly a quarter to a third of the harvest is held back as seed tubers, and more is lost to rot and sprouting in barn storage before it reaches a market.

### how are yams stored

In barns built of vertical poles, where tubers are tied in the shade with air moving around them and inspected through the dry season. Tubers are cured for a few days after lifting to seal wounds. Even so, respiration, sprouting, rot and insects consume a large share of the crop before it is eaten.

### how are yams priced

By the tuber rather than the kilogram in most west African markets, in heaps or hundreds, with size and shape driving the price. There is no futures contract and no published world benchmark. Prices fall at harvest as barns fill and climb through the dry season as stored tubers sprout and rot.

## Sources

- FAOSTAT Crops and livestock products (QCL), 2024. License: CC BY 4.0 (FAO Statistical Database Terms of Use). https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data/QCL
- CEPII BACI international trade database (HS22, V202601), BACI HS22 V202601, fetched 6 September 2026. License: Etalab Open Licence 2.0. https://www.cepii.fr/CEPII/en/bdd_modele/bdd_modele_item.asp?id=37

Text last reviewed 2026-09-05. Cite as: Commodity Origins, "Where do yams come from?", https://commodityorigins.com/commodities/yams/.