An agricultural consortium, PyroPower Africa Consortium, has expressed readiness to strengthen Good Agronomic Practices (GAPs) to increase the production of cassava.
The consortium, a group of firms with expertise in agriculture and technology, said it planned to boost farmers’ productivity with a modern technology known as Pyrochemy technology.
Dr Daniel Willy, Senior Manager, Policy Agribusiness and Commercialisation , African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF), stated this at a stakeholders meeting on Wednesday in Abuja.
The consortium is made up of funders and partners including Energy Catalyst; University of Leicester; Aston University; Hello Tractor; AtManCorp; AATF, PyroGenesys Nigeria, among others.
Willy said that AATF was supporting their projects in the area of capacity building and mobilisation.
“AATF brings two elements to the projects. One is mobilisation of the farmers who are involved in the production of the cassava.
“So, after we mobilise the farmers, we train them on good agronomic practices. This is because we want them to increase the yield of their tubers of cassava apart from supplying the biomass, so we train them.
“The second thing is, we are playing mechanism services to these farmers because they need to produce in less drudgery approaches,” he said.
The Chief Executive Officer, PyroGenesys Limited, Mr Simon Ighofose, said, the testing of the technology in Nigeria was imperative because of the vast arable land Nigeria possessed.
“Pyrogenesys has invented a technology which is patented. The technology is called Pyrochemy.
“This technology can take any type of agricultural waste, heat it without oxygen, and break it down into two major parts.
“The first part is a vapour, which is a fuel. We burn that vapour to generate renewable electricity and renewable heat.
“The second part is a solid similar to charcoal, but it is a very special form of carbon. We upgrade it into a biofertiliser.(NAN)
