Last updated on October 29th, 2026 at 05:01 am
Commercial cassava farming starts long before the first stem goes into the ground. Land, labor, stems, and a buyer decide your profit before harvest day arrives. This guide prices each one per plot, using rates paid around Ntigha, Abia State.
My phone rings most weeks with farmers offering mature cassava farms, because they found my website and need a buyer quickly.
I do not buy or sell roots, but I connect those sellers with people who want them.
Those calls taught me that growing cassava is the easy part, while selling it at a profit is not.
This guide covers leasing land, paying laborers, buying stems, and estimating income for a single standard plot of land in southeastern Nigeria.
Every rate comes from my community in Abia State, Nigeria, and I mark clearly where you must add figures from your own area.
Table of Contents
What Makes a Cassava Farm Commercial
A commercial farm grows cassava mainly to sell, so every cost must be recovered from roots or processed products.
Household farmers can absorb a poor season, but a commercial grower with leased land and hired labor cannot.
That difference makes planning money and buyers more important than any single farming technique you learn.
Growing practices themselves, from soil checks to harvest timing, are covered in the cassava farming and cultivation field guide.
This article stays with the business decisions that come before and around those practices.
Step 1: Secure Land at a Fair Lease
Land leases around Ntigha have no fixed price, and each owner negotiates based on how much they value the plot.
Some owners lease idle land for free, and my father gave out unused family land that way for years.
Others charge about ₦10,000 per year, while some ask about ₦20,000 for a single plot.
Owners usually set the rent so a tenant can at least break even after one full year of cultivation.
A standard Nigerian plot measures about 50 by 100 feet, roughly 465 square meters, so check boundaries before paying.
Agree the lease period in writing, because cassava needs close to a year before the roots are ready.
Test the soil before committing, using the steps in this walkthrough on testing soil for cassava.
Step 2: Budget for Labor Before You Clear
Hired labor is the largest cash cost on most small cassava farms in my area, and it arrives in waves.
Clearing workers in Ntigha charge about ₦3,500 per day, and a plot usually needs two workers.
Some laborers prefer a flat ₦8,000 to clear the land, no matter if the job takes them two days.
Weeders charge about ₦5,000 per day or more, depending on farm size and how tall the weeds have grown.
IITA’s cassava training manual advises weeding at 4, 8, and 12 weeks after planting.
That means at least three paid weeding rounds in the first season, so budget for all of them from day one.
Ridging, planting, and harvesting labor also cost money, so ask local workers for their current rates before you start.
Cheaper weed control options are compared in the article on managing weeds in cassava.
Step 3: Buy Healthy Stems in the Right Quantity
Stems in my area are sold in bundles of 35 to 50 sticks, each about one meter long.
A bundle costs between ₦1,500 and ₦2,500, depending on the seller and the variety.
The same IITA manual recommends 25-centimeter cuttings planted 1 meter apart, giving about 10,000 stands per hectare.
Each one-meter stick therefore gives about four cuttings, so one bundle plants roughly 140 to 200 stands.
A 465-square-meter plot at that spacing holds about 465 plants, which means about three bundles per plot.
Reject any bundle showing mosaic symptoms, and follow the checks for sourcing clean cassava stems before paying.
Match the variety to your buyer, using the comparison of improved and local varieties on this site.
Commercial Cassava Farming Costs and Income per Plot
The table below adds up the costs I can confirm for one plot in Ntigha during a single season.
| Item | Low estimate | High estimate | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Land lease for one year | ₦0 | ₦20,000 | Free on some family land, about ₦10,000 is common |
| Clearing | ₦7,000 | ₦8,000 | Two workers at ₦3,500 a day, or a flat fee |
| Stems, about three bundles | ₦4,500 | ₦7,500 | Assumes 1 m spacing and 25 cm cuttings |
| Weeding, three rounds | ₦15,000 | ₦15,000 or more | Assumes one paid day per round |
| Ridging, planting, harvesting | Add local rates | Add local rates | Not yet confirmed for this table |
| Known costs | ₦26,500 | ₦50,500 or more | Before ridging, planting, harvest, and fertilizer |
A standard plot yields about 8 to 15 used fertilizer bags of roots, depending on soil fertility and variety.
Roots sell for about ₦7,000 per bag locally, but the price falls to about ₦5,000 in a glut.
That puts income per plot at roughly ₦56,000 to ₦105,000 in a normal season.
During a glut, the same harvest brings only about ₦40,000 to ₦75,000, before unconfirmed labor costs.
The margin is real but thin, which is why the buyer question in the next section matters most.
Nigerian yields averaged about 6.3 tonnes per hectare against 20.61 in Thailand, BusinessDay reported, so better management lifts income directly.
Season records from my own community appear in the 2023 Ntigha farming data.
Step 4: Find a Buyer Before You Plant
There are no big cassava processors near us, so most farmers sell roots to small local processors.
Those sales leave many farmers with little or no profit, and that pattern discourages younger people from farming.
Roots here are sold by the bag, in basins, in heaps at market, or as a whole standing farm.
A farm buyer digs one or two plants to judge the yield, then offers a single price for everything.
Gluts make the problem worse, and garri prices fell 51 percent year on year in late 2025, BusinessDay reported.
Why harvest surpluses crash prices, and how processing protects income, is laid out in the cassava glut explainer piece.
Processing your own roots into garri can lift income, as the garri business plan shows with costs per bag.
Speak with processors, traders, and garri makers before planting, and agree on rough volumes and timing.
Step 5: Treat the First Season as a Pilot
Start with one to three plots, so a poor harvest or weak price teaches you without ruining you.
Record every payment for land, labor, stems, and transport, along with bags harvested and prices received.
After one season, you will know your real cost per bag instead of relying on estimates like mine.
Scale up only when records show a profit, and when a buyer has agreed to take the larger harvest.
Other ventures sorted by starting budget are compared in the list of cassava business opportunities on this site.
Mistakes That Drain a New Farm’s Money
- Leasing land before finding a buyer: roots that cannot be sold quickly lose value within days of harvest.
- Skipping a weeding round: weeds left past the early weeks cut yields far more than the wages you saved.
- Buying cheap, infected stems: mosaic carried in cuttings reduces the harvest for the whole season.
- Planting too much in year one: a large untested farm multiplies every mistake in labor, pricing, and selling.
A longer list of field errors appears in the article on common cassava farming mistakes.
Conclusion
Commercial cassava farming pays only when land, labor, stems, and selling are planned together before planting.
Around Ntigha, known costs for one standard plot run from about ₦26,500 to ₦50,500 before several labor items.
A plot yielding 8 to 15 bags can earn ₦56,000 to ₦105,000, but gluts cut that sharply.
Find your buyer before planting, start with a small pilot season, and record every single naira you spend.
If you want help connecting with buyers or sellers of cassava farms, contact Cassava Pathway through this website, WhatsApp, or X.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to start a cassava farm per plot?
Around Ntigha, land, clearing, stems, and three weeding rounds cost about ₦26,500 to ₦50,500 per plot.
Ridging, planting, harvesting, and fertilizer add more, depending on your local rates.
How many bags of cassava does one plot yield?
A standard plot in my area yields about 8 to 15 fertilizer bags of roots.
Soil fertility, the variety planted, and timely weeding decide where your harvest falls.
How many bundles of stems do I need for one plot?
About three bundles of 35 to 50 one-meter sticks usually cover a standard plot.
That assumes 25-centimeter cuttings planted about one meter apart, as IITA’s training manual recommends.
Is commercial cassava farming profitable in Nigeria?
It can be, but margins are thin when roots go to small local processors.
Securing a buyer, avoiding glut sales, and processing some roots yourself improve profit considerably.
Chimeremeze Emeh is a tropical crop farmer and chemical engineer from Ntigha, Isiala Ngwa North LGA, Abia State, Eastern Nigeria, specializing in cassava and palm oil, with over 30 years of hands-on experience growing, harvesting, and processing cassava. He grows TMS series, TME 419, and local traditional varieties on his own farms and operates a small-scale cassava flour and starch production business through Cassava Pathway, which he founded as a CAMA-registered agribusiness in 2024. He is also the founder of Palm Oil Pathway, where he applies the same tropical farming expertise. His farms are located in Ntigha, Abia State.