Sensitization and willingness of farmers to pay for cassava leaves as a feed ingredient.

What is it about?

Despite the fact that cassava leaf is loaded with nutrients and minerals, literature also established that it contains other hidden nutrients and cyanide which is dangerous to human health if it the cyanide content is too high. However, there is a great need to ascertain the level of cyanide in cassava leaf and be sure that it is safe for human consumption and if not assess its usefulness for animal nutrition. This study described the nutritional benefit of cassava leaf, assessed its level of cyanide content; examined respondents’ awareness and perception; and analysed the factors determining livestock farmers’ Willingness to Pay (WTP) for cassava leaves as a livestock feed ingredient.

Featured Image

Photo by Budi Gustaman on Unsplash

Photo by Budi Gustaman on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Literature findings revealed that cassava leaf contains a high crude protein of 16.7 - 39.9% dry weight comparable to that of fresh egg (Ly and Angolan, 2007; Vasavi and Nirmala, 2016) with essential amino acid higher than soybean protein and with its overall vitamin level surpassing that of legumes, leafy legumes, milk, egg and cheese (Montagnac et al., 2009). Various researchers have worked on cassava leaf fed to livestock (sheep, goat, pig, poultry, cattle and even fishes) and it has proved to increase their productivity in terms of milk yield, body weight gain and high palatability (Ngi et al., 2006; Marjurki et al., 2008; Olufemi et al., 2016; Diarra et al., 2017) As useful as the leaves are, not so many of these livestock farmers are making use of it as feed probably because they are not aware of these nutritional benefits in cassava leaf and/ or because they do not seek for information

Perspectives