Concepts of Cassava Cultivation: Investigations in Environment & Economy
Curious cultivation of cassava for the Guyanese environment, culture, and economy
Cassava is a starchy root vegetable that is at the heart of Guyana’s national dish pepper pot. In 2020 artist Jonathan Plass explored the future of cassava cultivation in Guyana through fictional news articles. Below you can see two spoof of The New Yorker covers depicting two different dreams of where cassava cultivation would be in the year 2040. On the left you see Plass’s dystopian picture of cassava production where cassava is grown in synthetic environments by machines assisted by underpaid and overworked staff. In this vision cassava production has been standardized and profit flows to singular owners of cassava incubation chambers and greenhouses. On the right you can see Plass’s utopian vision of cassava cultivation. In this this vision cassava production is done on small scale local farms following the tradition of manual cassava production in which every part of the plant is used. The above video breaks down these traditional steps to processing cassava overlaid with uses and end of life options of cassava components. It also documents how cassareep is produced and then used in cooking pepper pot.
These two futures Plass present are then put in dialogue with one another in a fictional New York Times article entitled “The Race of Cassava Control!” Here Plass depicts a op-ed piece with various perspectives from health and environment to labor rights. There is a tension between local small scale farmers who believe “It’s our land, our crop, and our culture” and more mechanically inclined masterminds scheming for the industrialization of cassava cultivation to “feed the world for less”. The fictional article even includes an image of these two futures standing at odds with one another. The left side depicting a world in which many are employed to produce cassava, profits are shared, and the environment isn’t harmed. The right side depicting a world in which few are employed due to mechanical harvesters and processing machines and large farms are owned by singular business executives who selfishly line their pockets with profit. There is however a nod in the image to sustainably powering the mechanized future of cassava cultivation in the windmill behind the cassava plant. There is lastly a meta narrative Plass overlay’s by leaving the marks of an unseen figure highlighting a short form version of the story.
Fictional New York Times article entitled “The Race for Cassava Control“ (Jonathan Plass , 10/6/2020)
The Future of Cassava Cultivation
Originally from Brazil, cassava is the third most important source of calories in the tropics, behind rice and corn, and sustains an estimated 800 million throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America. In sub-Saharan Africa, it provides 30 to 50 percent of all calories consumed. Currently while production of corn over the past 60 years has gone up, cassava production has sat nearly still. Because of this lack of the development, there are currently large gains that could be made in the Cassava industry. Many of the countries that produce Cassava are currently deemed developing and can stand to benefit from the economic independence this increase in both production and efficiency would grant these nations.
Digital scan of advertisements in the back of CO-OP Republic Guyana 1970 (June 1970)
Fundamentally cassava is an excellent resource as it is very low maintenance, and requires little resources to produce, additionally, 100% of the cassava can be used eliminating almost all waste. Despite its widespread consumption, cassava yields have not improved in a quarter of a century. In a 2017 study, Long Lab identified 14 paths for improving cassava yield potential through genetic modifications, both engineered and bred. Each route could increase yield by as much as 25 to 100 percent, while also improving how efficiently the plant uses precious resources such as water and fertilizer. Currently, cassava genes are being modified to improve how quickly cassava recovers from photoprotection. Other improvements include steps such as engineering plants to produce fewer leaves; improving the way leaves are arranged to better capture light; and altering leaf color to reduce shading of lower leaves. Working to reduce losses from photorespiration, a parasitic process that occurs during photosynthesis when oxygen is accidentally used instead of carbon dioxide. Photorespiration causes plants to burn as much as 40 percent of the energy they have produced through photosynthesis. With these improvements cassava cultivation is helping increase economic independent and food security.
Photograph of Grow More Food inside the Walter Rodney Archives in Georgetown, Guyana (Plass 5/30/2023)
Food security is not new to anyone in Guyana in 1971 the Ministry of Information and Culture published Grow More Food, which “defines Government’s agricultural policy, and then provides an instructional agricultural manual.” These policies focused on localizing food production with the goal “to the land Guyana moves to feed itself“. The introduction of the book states:
Introduction
The Government of Guyana has set itself the task of
Feeding,
Housing and
Clothing
the entire nation by 1976
This is a task in which the entire nation must be involved. Its success will benefit every Guyanese by way of increasing employment and providing a better standard of living. It is this whole idea of working together for the nation’s good that is behind the creation of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
To be really able to FEED ourselves, there must be a change of attitude with regards to agriculture and consumer tastes - what we eat. The task of feeding ourselves depends upon the rapid development of agriculture here in Guyana and our developing a Guyanese nationalism to buy local and eat local, enjoyable foodstuff. (Grow More Food, Ministry of Information and Culture. November, 1971)
Digital scan of advertisements in the back of CO-OP Republic Guyana 1970 (June 1970)
Figure 1. National food availability from domestic production as proportion from recommended intake by the Livewell diet in grams per capita per day for 187 (dairy, 186) countries in 2020. Thereby, 100% means that all recommendations of a food group are met. (Stehl, J., Vonderschmidt, A., Vollmer, S. et al. Gap between national food production and food-based dietary guidance highlights lack of national self-sufficiency. Nat Food (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01173-4)
While this may seem like a lofty goal, nearly 54 years later Guyana has, from one perspective, achieved this goal by being the only nation to be self sufficient across all 7 food groups. “Out of 186 countries, 154 can fulfil the requirements for 2 to 5 out of 7 food groups of the Livewell diet through domestic production (Fig. 1). Only Guyana achieves self-sufficiency for all seven food groups, while China and Vietnam attain six.” This study by Jonas Stehl uses Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Food Balance Sheets (FBS) 2020 production data and the World Wildlife Fund’s (WWF’s) Livewell diet to analyse the discrepancy between domestic food production and dietary guidelines across seven food groups.