"Long-term worries" for cassava

(Baonghean) - Recently, a cassava starch processing factory of great scale and technology was started in Hoa Son commune (Anh Son), which is a good sign that the southwestern mountainous region of our province has another factory. Thus, cassava - which used to be a "must-eat" plant - has now become a raw material for processing into export products; the value of cassava tubers has multiplied many times. Then the land in the districts from Anh Son to Ky Son will be utilized. People will have more income. The problem of burning forests for farming will surely decrease day by day... Even more happily, if this factory operates effectively, it will be a "push" to attract more investors to the mountainous region of our province.

However, we would like to boldly raise the following points for investors and localities to consider in their long-term development strategies:

Firstly, cassava is a plant that easily damages the soil, because it drains a large amount of water and nutrients from the soil, and the substances that cassava secretes through its roots poison the soil. Therefore, if cassava is grown extensively, even on land that has been planted with cassava for 1 year, if it continues to be grown, the yield will decrease very quickly and it will be difficult to grow other crops. On the other hand, the land that can be planned to grow cassava raw materials from Anh Son to Ky Son is almost all land with large slopes, the level of soil erosion is very high, so the soil degradation is even stronger... Therefore, it is very likely that people will reclaim new land (including deforestation) to grow cassava.

Second, the local people in the raw material area of ​​the factory do not have the level of intensive farming, especially intensive farming on sloping land, so if they are not given specific, systematic and fundamental instructions, they will certainly only practice extensive farming, leading to the natural fertility of the soil being quickly depleted by the first cassava crop, the yield of the second cassava crop will drop rapidly; leading to a rapid decrease in the total output of the region and the factory will have difficulty having enough raw materials to process according to the design capacity.

Third, the distance from the factory to the raw material areas is not short. The volume of cassava transported to the factory in phase 1 is 570 tons/day, requiring 57 trips of 10-ton trucks; phase 2 is double that, requiring 114 trips of trucks... How to solve the collection and transportation is certainly not a simple problem. If this problem is not solved well, it will either discourage the factory or discourage the cassava growers.

Fourth, building a factory is difficult, but once built, how to organize production, manage operations, and how to establish a relationship between the factory and all 42 communes, including at least 2,000 cassava-growing households, to reach consensus and ensure the interests of all parties are harmonized; and the issue of environmental pollution... is much more difficult! An effectively operating factory will attract other investors and vice versa...

The above issues also refer to the relationship between the "three houses" (State, business, farmer), which is difficult to solve without a strong connection and real responsibility!

Truong Cong Anh