The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, FMARD, on Wednesday trained 60 master bakers on the inclusion of high-quality cassava flour in baking bread.
The News Agency of Nigeria reports that the bakers were also given 25kg of cassava flour each as starter packs.
Declaring the training open, the Minister of Agriculture, Dr Mahmood Abubakar, said that the promotion of high-quality cassava flour in bread and confectionery making was to reduce the importation of wheat.
Represented by the Director of Agriculture, Edo FMARD office, Wellington Omoragbon, Mr Abubakar said that the inclusion of cassava flour in baking bread would generate massive employment and save billions of naira from wheat importation.
He noted that the ministry had achieved partial success in proving that cassava flour inclusion was possible by continuous training of more bakers
“The cassava inclusion policy implementation is facing certain challenges which have reduced effort to achieve the desired objectives.
“The use of high-quality cassava flour for bread has been evolving through the promotion of the inclusive policy.
“There are proven technologies and evidence-based fact that Nigeria should keep sufficient percent inclusion of high quality cassava flour in wheat for bread making,” he said.
Mr Abubakar explained that inclusion of about 20 per cent of high-quality cassava flour alone could give the country more than 600,000 tonnes of cassava flour annually.
Benjamin Agbonze, the state chairman of Master Bakers on spoke on behalf of all the bakers present, and thanked the ministry for the training.
Mr Agbonze said “this training was brought to us in 2012 and we thought that it would continue but unfortunately they stopped it.
“We are happy today that the training has been revived. I assure you that we will take advantage of the training to create wealth for ourselves”.
NAN
