Nigeria to supply Walmart with $7 billion worth of cashew nu

Nigeria to supply Walmart with $7 billion worth of cashew nuts - Minister

He said, "Some people have asked whether by exporting yams we are not going to subject Nigeria to hunger and I had to inform council today that that will not certainly not rise".

Speaking at the event, Ogbeh pointed out export as one of the ways Nigeria can prevent food wastage, lamenting the country's poor preservation capacity.

It is encouraging to note that already, a Technical Committee on Nigeria Yam Export Programme (TCNYEP) headed by Professor Simon Irtwange is already active.

According to him, "there is really no shortage, new yams will be here in two weeks". Although prices are high in some areas, we are not short of food.

"The only challenge we may face will be the question of labour".

Without it, we can not talk about exporting yams since the cost of this national staple is still astronomical due to outdated farming, preservation and transportation methods in use.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report, in 1985, reported that Nigeria produced 18.3 million metric tons of yam from 1.5 million hectares, representing 73.8 per cent of total yam production in Africa.

The minister said that Nigerian government had so far shipped some consignments of yam to the US. Top government officials at state and federal levels have spoken grandiloquently about plans to re-launch the cash crops that once were the backbones of our economy before the advent of crude oil - palm produce, cocoa, groundnuts, cashew nuts, shea butter, cassava, gum arabic, cotton and the others - yet little has come of them.

"This we are doing by exporting the first consignment of certified yams to the United Kingdom and USA today", he said.

"We are in conversations with Walmart, the biggest supermarket chain in the US". Their demand is a 130,000 tonnes of cashew nuts per annum and the total value is $7 billion, but what we are doing now is shipping raw cashew to Vietnam; they are the ones roasting and selling to the US.

"This year we are going to create six cashew processing factories in Nigeria, one each to be cited in Enugu, Imo, Benue, Kogi, Kwara and Oyo states". These are the cashew belt for now.

Source:   appsforpcdaily.com/2017/06/nigeria-to-supply-walmart-with-7-billion-worth-of-cashew/