Pingle Cassava Starch

Pingle Cassava Starch

　　The cultivation of cassava in the county has a history of over a hundred years, primarily in mountainous and hilly areas.

Cassava is highly versatile—its raw starch can serve as a supplementary food, used in making pastries, while its residue can be used as animal feed. The starch processed from raw cassava is not only an excellent cooking ingredient but also an essential raw material for industries such as textiles, shoemaking, rubber, food, and chemicals.

Since the liberation, cassava cultivation in the county has continued to develop. Especially since the introduction of the high-yield variety “Red Tail” cassava in the early 1960s, the planting area has expanded continuously, and yields have increased year by year. In 1980, the county planted 23,106 mu of cassava, producing 500,000 kilograms of cassava starch.

In 1989, the county purchased 1.2411 million kilograms of cassava starch. In 1990, due to constraints of the commodity economy, the purchase volume of cassava starch dropped to 11.4 tons that year.

Cassava starch is simple to produce: wash freshly harvested cassava, then go through processes such as pulping, filtering, removing residue, settling, and drying. The cassava starch processed and produced in the county is white in color and of exceptionally high quality, earning widespread praise from users. The product is exported to Tianjin, Shanghai, Wuhan, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau, and various parts of Southeast Asia, with an annual export volume reaching one million kilograms.