By Hauwa Ali and Fatima Saka
Mrs Yemisi Iranloye is the CEO of Psaltry International, which is doing a great job of improving cassava value chain to ensure sufficient national supply as well as trains farmers to increase cassava quality. Iranloye was a recipient of the HERO Awards in the Agric Value Chain category. At the ceremony, she spoke with our editorial team, Excerpts:
What prompted your choice of cassava crop?
Cassava is a crop that is at home with most Nigerian farmers. You see almost every family, there will be one stock or the other way the back of the house, they use it to make garri or even use it for the animals. So has it been for the last hundreds of years. Cassava can be used to replace corn because there is too much emphasis on corn. And corn has various problems in terms of climate and all that. But cassava is a rugged crop. It is also a crop that is easily grown in Nigeria. It has a lot of carbohydrates and starch which can be extracted and used as raw materials both local and industrial. So it has a lot of benefits, that’s why cassava was chosen.
What informed your step up from cassava production into other productions?
I am a biochemist. My passion is to see that we’re able to do more products from cassava. So we started with starch, then we went to cassava flour, then we moved to glucose and sorbitol. Now we’re the first to use cassava to produce sorbitol in Africa and then second in the world. This is because we want to continue to add value to cassava so that we can continue to increase the amount of cassava we buy from farmers. So farmers get richer, we’re also able to reduce the amount of products we import from abroad, thereby increasing the import substitution. The money we use to import sorbitol and starch is being saved because they are being produced locally. We are saving the money. So basically, it’s just in a quest to do more that’s making us add more products to our product line.
What are the probable challenges you face?
Not so much challenges because these kinds of factories are in the local environment, just like we are in Alaide village in Oyo State. These environments do not have power, they don’t have roads, they don’t have water. We had to provide all these things, and it was very tough. You know, you have to collect loans to provide power, collect loans to do roads, collect loans to do everything. So the challenges are there. You also have to support the farmers with trainings, funding, provide collateral for them to get money from their banks. Manpower is also there. Before you move somebody from Lagos to come and work for you is difficult. Technology transfer also, we have to bring in people from abroad to train our staffs. All of these are tough, but they have to be done. We won’t sit back because of the challenges, we face it, solve it and move on.
Aside cassava, are there other crops you are exploring?
For now, we have not finished with cassava. We still want to do about 300 products from cassava including vitamins, Vitamin C, monosodium Glutamate-MSG, different things we can do from cassava. When we finish with cassava, we can start cracking out heads for other crops.
How does your factory affect the environment?
Our factory does not affect the environment negatively because we don’t even throw our water in the environment. We use the waste as manure. We take the wastes, dry them and apply them back as cellulose organic manure. So it returns the nutrients back into the soil, that’s how we have been doing the cycle for the past 10 years.
How do you feel as a trail blazer?
I am encouraged to do more.
How do you combine your business with family life?
It’s planning. I have to plan and know when to go home, take the children to school, etc.