Nigeria Milled Rice Domestic Consumption
Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with a population of over 130 million people, which accounts for 36% of Africa’s total population. In Nigeria, its domestic economy is dominated by agriculture, agriculture contributes about 35% to the GDP and employs about 70% of the total labor force. Its trade imports are dominated by capital foods, raw materials, and food. The major food crops are cereals, such as sorghum, maize, millet, rice, wheat. Tubers, such as yam, cassava. Legumes, such as groundnut, cowpeas, and vegetables, etc. Among the staple crops, rice has been the dominant grain in Nigeria.
Even though rice has the vital importance of the food requirements of the Nigerian population, it can not meet the needs of the national requirements. Consumers change their preferences of traditional staples such as cassava, maize, and yams for rice. And some urban consumers currently more prefer imported rice to locally produced rice due to the higher rice quality. To meet the increasing demand, Nigeria has had to turn to imported rice to close the gap between domestic demand and supply. The high demand for rice leads to considerable imports that today account for about 1,000,000 metric tons yearly. Rice imports have been increasing steadily, reaching 1.8 million t of milled rice in 2009. Average yearly per capita consumption was 15.8 kg during 1981-90, and by 2009 it was estimated at 20.9 kg.
The requirement for rice has been increasing at a much faster speed in Nigeria than in other West African countries since the mid-1970s. Nigerian now consumes an average of 24.8 kg of rice per year, accounting for 9% of total caloric intake (Rice Web, 2001).
The reason why Nigeria imports so much rice rather than produce in the local area is that the poor quality of locally produced rice. There is an immense potential market for locally produced rice if the rice quality and standards are well addressed. Hence, above-average growth rates in Nigerian per capita rice consumption are likely to continue in the future.
Development of Rice Mill Processing in Nigeria
â—† Traditional rice processing methods in Nigeria
The traditional rice processing method is to soak the rice paddy in the water for about 2-3 days, aims to soften rice kernel. Then, steam the soaked the rice or paddy for about 5-10 minutes and dried under the sun. And pound the rice in a mortar and pestle device with the purpose of remove rice husks. People also use small machines for hulling and milling. The traditional rice processing method is simple and tedious, paddy cleaned in this method are always in low capacity and short storage life.
â—† Modern rice processing technology in Nigeria
Compared to rice milling technology in the 1990s, there has some improvement in rice processing in Nigeria, the modern rice processing methods, are to clean the impurities and husks of rough rice by shellers, the shellers are made by rubber belt and rubber roll, with the function of rotating abrasive stones and separated the rice remaining from paddy by aspiration in a paddy separator.
The research finding suggests that the main problem of Nigeria rice is the existence of stone in rice grains. Some milling manufactures perceived this business opportunity and manufactured paddy de-cleaner, such as TQLM Series Rotary Paddy Cleaner and CSQZ Series Combined Cleaner, can successfully solve this problem and highly improved the paddy quality and rice storage life.
â—† Components of a rice milling plant
A complete unit rice milling production line includes the automatic feeding device, the paddy cleaner & de-stoner, rice husker, paddy separator, rice whitener, rice grader, bucket elevator, electrical controller cabinet.
—Vibrating cleaning sieve and de-stoner
The vibrating cleaning sieve has a different size, it aims to remove the small or large impurities in grains. Besides this, it also can screen out the stones contained in grains.
—Rice husker and paddy separator
Rice Husker is mainly used for removing the rice husks as well as taking rice husk apart the mixture of paddy and rice. The working speed of rice husker can be changed by several gearboxes, which can greatly improve the quality of rice and create the added value of rice. Paddy separator, mainly used for separating rough rice from paddy mixture according to the difference of optical characteristic of rice. By using the electro-optical technology to separating rice from paddy mixture, thereby, to remove the impurities in paddy and to improve the quality of rice.
—Rice whitener and rice grading sieve
Rice Whitener is used for whitening brown rice. The whitened rice has better mouthfeel compared with the brown rice and it can increase the commercial value of rice. Rice Grading Sieve can shift milled rice efficiently and accurately into several classes: head rice, large broken, medium broken, small broken, and etc.
—Bucket elevator and electrical controller cabinet
Large Demand on Quality Rice Required High Technological Rice Milling Equipment
In Nigeria, some local people always take their preference for imported rice due to the low quality of indigenous rice. In order to meet the urgent demand for high-quality rice, many small scale rice milling machines spring up. But this can not effectively solve customers’ demand, under this circumstance, the complete unit rice milling production line such as 15T/D Double Iron Roller Rice Milling Equipment should be the acceptable choice for Nigerian. All in all, the best way to resolve this problem is to improve the quality of indigenous rice in Nigeria and to adapt modern rice technologies in rice processing and production.
