It is amongst the cheapest edible things you can find here in Colombia, and assume across all South America, but then again, price of agricultural goods here is more or less close to zero if compared to price of them same goods when imported in North America / Europe / Australia.

Interesting. Is it easy to purchase Cassava Flour? (as opposed to the root vegetable or other Cassava products like Tapioca pearls).

Here in Brazil you can fill a shopping cart with the stuff in ant Carrefour. For restaurants, specially the ones that serve feijoada or barbecue*, is not hard to find it in 50kg sacs.

Manioc flour is the main ingredient in farofa, an essential side dish for both feijoada and bbq.

And it's delicious in all sorts of dishes.

Here in Brazil it is very cheap, because it grows everywhere. Used to plant in the backyard when I was a child.

> In ... Australia ... only available from selected specialty retailers or health food stores.

It can be found in the major supermarkets https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-qld-fnq-townsville-aitke/every... https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/search/products?searchTer...

Sort of. Of the links you provided only one of them - at Coles New World! - is for Cassava* Flour: https://shop.coles.com.au/a/a-qld-fnq-townsville-aitke/produ... and online. I’ve never seen it at my local Coles or Woolies (or Aldis, or Foodland, or IGA, etc)

The others are Tapioca starch or other products- not the same as flour.

* and even then it is called Tapioca Flour so may not be the same thing as Cassava Flour. It is some times difficult to distinguish between Tapioca (starch-heavy?) and Cassava (starch-moderate?)

You missed the "arrowroot" flour, which is actually tapioca flour https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/226010/mc-...

There seems to be a bit of disagreement out there but most of the things I've read say the flour and starch are the same thing.

Thanks, good to know about the Arrowroot flour being Tapioca flour.

Yeah, it is confusing determining what is flour and starch. Doesn’t help that there are a variety of names eg Yuca (but not Yucca!), Manioca, Cassava, etc.

Why are the products labelled Tapioca Flour and Cassava Flour different?

It's the same tuber from the same plant, isn't it?

Here in Brazil, we have two kinds of flour from manioc, a very coarse one used in Farofa and in a taco-shell like crunchy thing we call Tapioca, the other is a super thin one called Polvilho, used in biscuits and cheese bread. maybe they're related to the ones you know.

Thanks, I think the one commonly labelled Cassava Flour (at least in Australia) is the Povilho variety.

Maybe the Tapioca vs Povilho difference refers to the bitter vs sweet varieties of the Cassava plant?

It's probably a lot cheaper when called "tapioca" than when called "cassava", at least in North America. :-P

Except "tapioca" in NA can also mean "sago", which is a totally different plant.

Interesting, good to know! I don't think I've encountered that before.

I am confused by the difference between Tapioca and Cassava. The article doesn’t make this clear... and yeah, I can Wikipedia it ;)

As far as I can tell it's just a different common name.

Some things may be cheap and common in a place, but an exotic delicacy in others, so the market adjusts.

Often it's "ethnic" foods that are expensive, but there's an interesting inverse with chicken feet.

In the west, you can get Chicken feet for just about free, I think they're like $2 per kg at my supermarket. In China though, they're a delicacy and quite expensive.