Crop Husbandry: Cassava, Maize & Cowpea Cultivation 🌽

### Feeding 220+ Million Nigerians! 🌾 Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava and a top African grower of maize! Let’s examine how professional farmers cultivate these crops: **1. Cassava (*Manihot esculenta*)**: * **Propagation**: Vegetative stem cuttings (20–25 cm long with 4–6 nodes). * **Planting**: Inserted at a $45^\circ$ slant into raised soil ridges or mounds. * **Maturity**: 9 to 18 months depending on improved variety (e.g., Vitamin A yellow cassava). * **Processing**: Peeled, grated, fermented, and toasted into Garri, or dried into high-quality cassava flour (HQCF). **2. Maize / Corn (*Zea mays*)**: * **Propagation**: Direct seed planting (2–3 seeds per hole at 2.5 cm depth). * **Spacing**: 75 cm between rows, 25 cm within rows. * **Fertilizer**: NPK 15:15:15 at planting, followed by Urea top-dressing at 4 weeks. * **Harvest**: Green cobs at 60–75 days for boiling/roasting, or dry grain at 90–120 days for milling. * **Storage**: Dried to under 12% moisture and treated in hermetic bags to stop maize weevils (*Sitophilus zeamais*).