HarvestPlus’ Yellow Cassava… promoting nutrition through TV

Yellow Cassava

And it was a few minutes past 9pm local time; an important announcement was about to be made. Venue was Expo Hall, Eko Hotel and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos. The event was the third edition of the AfricaMagic Viewers’ Choice Awards (AMVCA). The hall was packed to the brim with stakeholders in Africa’s Film/TV industry.

The tension in the air was thick enough to be sliced with a knife. Across Africa, in over 50 countries, over 100 million viewers stayed glued to their TV boxes awaiting the biggest news in the entertainment industry. Only five movies, out of over 2,000 entries received by the organizers of the AMVCA from filmmakers across Africa, made it to the final shortlist as Best Movie 2014.

Yellow Cassava, produced by Zeb Ejiro in partnership with HarvestPlus Nigeria, ran neck-to-neck with big budget movies of 2014: Kunle Afolayan’s October 1; Lancelot Oduwa Imasuen’s Invasion 1897, Steve Gukas’s A place in the stars and Frank Rajah Arase’s Iyore.

Nigeria’s Oil And Irish Potato

Irish Potato as a Replacement for Oil in Nigeria
NOVEMBER 6, 2014

By Ademola Adegbamigbe AgriNigeria News

The financial difficulty Nigeria experiences at present reminds me of the Irish, their potato and the famine that hit them like a stiletto, scattering them into the four winds. Between 1845 and 1852, what was popularly referred to as the Irish Potato famine killed over one million people. Worse still, the famine made over a million others to emigrate to the Americas, Australia, Africa, and elsewhere.

Cause of their problem was the introduction of this staple. Before the introduction of potato to Ireland, the people fed on butter, milk and grain products. Initially, potato was food for the “big people” but it later stole its way into the homes of peasants, overtaking what it met on the dining table.

Vitamin A Rich OFSP working wonders in Uganda

ORANGE-FLESHED SWEET POTATOES: IMPROVING LIVES IN UGANDA

A nutritious sweet potato variety is growing in popularity and becoming an important strategy to improve vitamin A deficiency across Uganda. Orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) is rich in vitamin A and is being disseminated with support from USAID under Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative.     OFSP has now been adopted by over 55,000 Ugandan farming households, with up to 237,000 households expected to be planting and eating it by 2018. In November 2013, the Government of Uganda released two more varieties of this potato, bringing the total number to six.

Tubers from OFSP harvest

The potato was Introduced in 2007 by HarvestPlus, a part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. 

Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato as vegetables for man and animal

Agro Nigeria News

Fasakin Jadesola Oluwayemisi, a trainer cum facilitator is also an all-season vegetable farmer with bias for the cultivation of orange-fleshed-sweet potato. In an exclusive interview in Maya village where her farm is located, she discussed her new found farming-love and sundry issues. Excerpts;

What kind of farming do you practise?

I am a vegetable farmer and specifically into the Orange-fleshed-sweet potato production and am also a vine multiplier.

Pigs being fed with OSFP Leaves

What prompted your interest in farming?

I must say that it was my love for consuming fresh vegetables that triggered my interest and lured me away from my white-collar Job into farming and ever since, it has been a good experience. Thereafter, I developed myself by attending training and seminars on farming.

US pledges more support for Nigeria’s agric sector

PUNCH

Regional Agricultural Counselor in Nigeria for the US Department of Agriculture, Mr Kurt Seifarth, on Thursday restated his government’s commitment to supporting Nigeria in the development of her agriculture sector.

Seifarth disclosed this to the News Agency of Nigeria in Lagos on the sidelines of a one-day interactive conference with Nigeria’s retail food business operators.

Good News: AU Leaders’ Summit in Malabo, Pledge to Do Agric!

AUTHOR

Nachilala Nkombo8 July 2014 11:42AM UTC

One.org
Our voices were heard in Malabo, we made a difference!

On January 20, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, we launched the Do Agric, It Payscampaign. The campaign called on African governments to keep their promises to invest in agriculture and support smallholder farmers when they meet at the AU Heads Of state summit in June in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

ORANGE FLESHED SWEET POTATO (OFSP)

      

OFSP

Nigeria is home to over 50% of West Africa’s population,  70% of the population is below the poverty line (2007 est.). Malnutrition is widespread, with over 41% percent of children under five years of age are stunted – i.e. chronically malnourished  and the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency at 29.5%, a level of public health concern (Maziya Dixon et al., 2005).  To reduce high levels of malnutrition that leads to  increased child mortality, reduced learning, low economic capacity and effectively stunt economic development.

Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD)  in collaboration with International Potato Center (CIP) introduced the Orange-fleshed varieties (OFSP) that are extremely rich in beta-carotene, with the precursor for vitamin A which is better than White-fleshed varieties that have no beta-carotene. Among OFSP, a useful rule is: the deeper the intensity of the orange color, the greater the amount of beta-carotene.

OFSP varieties that can supply the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A for children and non-lactating women contain (300-700 μg retinol activity equivalents) OFSP is a high yielding crops with two different variety currently released after due research work by NRCRI Umudike, Abia State, It has yielding  potential of up to 25 tons per hectare compare with the low yielding variety of white fleshed of 5 ton/ha.