Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Although it is often sold as an ornamental flower in the U.S., the lablab has numerous benefits. This legume, native to sub-Saharan Africa, is both a versatile food staple and tool for land restoration.

A recent study by researchers from Cornell and Rhodes universities and the Sebakwe Black Rhino Conservation Trust found that traditional food crops, such as mubovora (pumpkin) and ipwa (sweet reed), are an important source of community resilience in Zimbabwe—including resilience to climate change and economic turbulence.

Unlike traditional crops, the majority of commercial crops that have been introduced to the region “are not adapted to local conditions and require high inputs of agrochemical inputs such as fertilizers, mechanization, and water supply,” according to the study. These crops tend to be more vulnerable to climatic changes, such as the drought and subsequent flooding that occurred in Zimbabwe’s Sebakwe area in 2007–08.

To avoid some of these challenges, many communities and farmers turned—and returned—to growing traditional and indigenous crops. By incorporating indigenous vegetables and increasing crop diversity, farmers improved their diets and increased agricultural resilience to pest, diseases, and changes in weather. Planting different varieties of maize and millet also enabled farmers to match specific crops to their own microclimates.

Additional benefits of growing more diverse crops include seed saving and the processing of traditional foods. With dried and other preserved traditional foods, communities have a more secure and reliable food source during the off-seasons. And seed saving and sharing enable communities to remain independent from commercial agricultural companies, helping to ensure future food security.

For more on the benefits of growing indigenous vegetables as crops, see Innovation of the Week: Homegrown Solutions to Alleviating Hunger and Poverty, Keeping Weeds for Nutrition and Taste, and Creating a Well-Rounded Food Revolution.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

When forests are cleared in West Africa for firewood or for farmland, the Dika trees are, more often than not, left untouched. Farmers have too much to gain from harvesting the tree’s fruits and seeds to burn or discard a Dika found in the wild.

Indigenous to West Africa, a Dika tree can grow to be as tall as 40 meters and produces a small green and yellow fruit that looks, at first glance, like a small mango. (Photo credit: Lost Crops of Africa)

Indigenous to West Africa, a Dika tree can grow to be as tall as 40 meters and produces a small green and yellow fruit that looks, at first glance, like a small mango.

Its fruit ranges in taste from sweet to bitter and can be enjoyed—especially the sweeter varieties—fresh off the tree, or made into jelly, jam or “African-mango juice.”

But while the fruit is a delicious treat, the seeds are where the real value can be found. Resembling smooth walnuts, Dika seeds are cracked open by harvesters to collect the edible kernel contained inside. These kernals can be eaten raw or roasted, but most are processed and pounded into Dika butter or compacted into bars or pressed to produce a cooking oil.

The seeds also produce a unique flavor when crushed and are combined with the other spices to make “ogbono soup,” a common dish. The wide popularity of ogbono soup has created a large market for Dika seeds and harvesters can trade Dika kernals at both the local and regional scale. Out of season, Dika seeds bring in an especially high price—it has been estimated that a farmer can make up to $USD300.00 off of the seeds produced by just one tree.

Each year, thousands of tons of “Dika nuts” are harvested throughout Western Africa and the popularity of this wild tree has lead to many attempts at commercial cultivation. The Dika is a slow maturing plant—it takes 10 to 15 years for a tree to begin bearing fruit. Breeders, motivated by the value of its fruit, are working on developing faster growing varieties as well as varieties with shells  that are easier to crack open.

But whether or not the Dika is successfully tamed by breeders and made more commercially viable as a domestic crop, the tree in the wild is already providing a critical income to millions of farmers and harvesters throughout West Africa.

To read Moringa: The Giving Tree, A Little Crop That’s Come a Long Way, Many Good Reasons to Grow Teff, Amaranth: Food Production Without Attention, and African Eggplant: The Fruit that is Enjoyed as  Vegetable.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

IITA, in partnership with the Cameroon Government National Program for Roots and Tuber Development (PNDRT), is developing and introducing improved varieties of cassava with resistance to major pests and diseases to help increase production. (Photo credit: Bernard Pollack)

In Cameroon, one of the foods that grows best is cassava. But farmers struggle with low yields because of pests and diseases that damage crops, making each harvest much more labor intensive than they are worth. “Farmers are spending more on planting materials and field maintenance to grow cassava and they are unable to make profit from the poor harvests,” says Emmanuel Njukwe, Chief of Service for the Crop Improvement and Utilization Unit at The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). “They are fighting an expensive battle against pests and diseases.”

To help make the battle a little less labor intensive and financially costly, IITA, in partnership with the Cameroon Government National Program for Roots and Tuber Development (PNDRT), is developing and introducing improved varieties of cassava with resistance to major pests and diseases to increase production. IITA and PNDRT are also training farmers in post-harvest processing techniques to improve quality and add value to products farmers have to sell and connecting those farmers to high-paying enterprises and markets.

“Once we identify varieties of cassava that we think will benefit local growers,” says Emmanuel, “we work closely with farmers to identify and select the new varieties and ensure that the new varieties meet farmers’ needs.” Groups of farmers participating in a field test of a new IITA cassava variety compare the new variety with their best local variety. “The farmers then pick the variety they like best,” continues Emmanuel. “They tell us what they like and don’t like and then we help train them to get the most out of those varieties, in the field and at the market.”

One of the farmers’ groups that received training and materials from IITA and government extension officers to process cassava into flour is now connected to a bakery that uses the flour to make cakes. Being able to grow and process cassava as a group, explains Emmanuel, helps reduce production costs for individual farmers. Says Emmanuel, “When we train the farmers to process their crop it makes it easier for them to transport and store the product, and to sell to larger consumers like a business to improve their livelihoods.”

IITA encourages the farmers’ groups to specialize in different processing options or storage techniques and then encourages them to work together. Farmers who specialize in processing cassava into flour, for example, can reach out to another group that specializes in storage and utilization for support and services. In this way, the groups can create financially beneficial links to each other, in addition to the links to the market that IITA also helps to cultivate.

“The model we want to use is to promote the smallholder farmers,” continues Emmanuel. “Right now, many farmers do not earn high income from cassava production. But the potentials are there to change all of that. We give them the information, the training, and the crop varieties they need to do that. But we do it with the help of the farmers, in every step of the process.”

To read more about how farmers are improving their income and livelihoods through improved crops and processing, see: Bringing Inputs to Farmers, ECOVA MALI: Building Home Grown Knowledge, New Frontier Farmers and Processor Group: Reviving Farmland and Improving Livelihoods, The Abooman Women’s Group: Working together to Improve Livelihoods, It’s All About the Process, Turning the Catch of the Day into Improved Livelihoods and Transforming Crops into Products.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

While the coast of The Gambia is a popular—and economically thriving— tourist destination for European vacationers, the inland portion of the country provides little means for young men to make a living. Many leave their villages for the coast or even other countries, in hopes of making more money in urban areas.

The Home Farm Project works with villages to break up community land and give it to young men who have expressed interest in farming. (Photo credit: Sandy Martin)

This economic disparity within The Gambia, coupled with its agricultural potential, is what inspired Sandy Martin to found the Home Farm Project in 2004.  The Home Farm Project works with rural communities to establish the basic training, tools and other resources needed to build a productive and income-generating farm, and give young men from the area a reason to stay.

“It really hurts the community when the men leave,” says Sandy. “Everyone suffers because of it.”

It’s not that women don’t farm too, explains Sandy. It’s just that, in addition to keeping gardens, women are responsible for caring for the children and other household chores. And it is the men who, without the proper resources to make a living from farming, find they have little recourse but to leave the villages in search of employment elsewhere.

The Home Farm Project works with villages to break up community land and give it to young men who have expressed interest in farming. The organization builds wells and provides pumps to make the water more accessible for irrigation. It promotes drought tolerant plants and trees, such as moringa, in order to diversify crops, create a year-round harvest, and provide resistance to the arid climate. Many of the trees and shrubs promoted by the project can also be used as “live fences” to keep out baboons and other animals in the area that often pillage small gardens and farms.  All of these plants and shrubs provide additional benefits such as fodder for livestock and help to sequester carbon in, and provide nutrients to, the soil.

The ultimate goal is to help farmers build a business and as much as possible, the projects source materials used to build home farms locally. Two farmers in the Kunkoto district, for example, have, with the help of the Home Farm Project, established a Sustainability Centre or nursery, to provide other local farmers with seeds and seedlings to build their own income generating farms.

“This isn’t about a hand out,” says Sandy. “It’s so important for these projects to become self-sustaining because that is what will provide food and income over the long run. And what will strengthen the community.”

To learn more about innovations that turn agriculture into a livelihood, see: How to Keep Kids “Down on the Farm,” Conversations with Farmers: Discussing the School Garden with a DISC Project Student, Cultivating a Passion for Agriculture, Improving Farmer Livelihoods and Wildlife Conservation, Protecting Wildlife While Improving Food Security, Health, and Livelihoods, and Helping Conserve Wildlife–and Agriculture–in Mozambique.

In 2004 Peter Njodzeka founded the Life and Water Development Group Cameroon (LWDGC) with a rather simple goal. “ I wanted to see the people in my area have clean water,” he said. “And we kept expanding. That’s how it started.”

A family drinks water purified by a bio sand filter at a training workshop in Kumbo, Cameroon. (Photo credit: LWDGC)

While Peter was growing up in Nkuv, the small village in Cameroon where he was born, no one had clean water.  The water available for drinking was also used by livestock and wildlife, as well as for the whole village’s washing. Every year at least one child would die from illness caused by the dirty water and most households reported having at least one sick family member in the past six months at any given time. “When I was growing up that’s how everyone lived,” said Peter. “But when I left the village and came to Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon, I saw that things were so different from my village and I wanted to change things to make them better.”

Six years later, LWDGC, with help from Engineers Without Borders USA Hope College Chapter taught the technicians of LWDGC how to construct and install bio sand filters in the village of Nkuv. In 2008, Thirst Relief International USA partnered with LWDGC and has been bringing access to clean water to over 6 villages in addition to Nkuv, as well as providing wells and latrines for 23 schools, and providing education about hygiene and sanitation practices.  And they are providing access to the clean water with a very unlikely technique–they are using dirt and bacteria to make the dirty water clean.

LWDGC and Thirst Relief International are building bio sand filters and teaching households how to use and maintain them, greatly improving the cleanliness of drinking water and all but eliminating diseases caused by contaminated water. Bio sand filters are built with the help of an iron mold. Concrete forms the base of the filter and its center is filled with layers of differently-sized, crushed rock. Two layers of gravel and then fine-grained sand create three levels through which water is poured over the course of three weeks. Slowly on the very top forms what is called a biolayer. Once that final layer has formed, the filter removes 99 percent of the bacteria in water that passes through it and is ready to use.

The drinking water slowly filters through the layers of naturally formed bacteria and sand at a rate of about 1 liter per minute and comes out clean and ready for consumption from a pipe that’s connected through the concrete from the bottom to the side top outlet of the filter. If properly maintained a biosand filter can be used for up to 12 months without the need for much maintenance.

When LWDGC partners with a community to provide the filters, the first thing the organization does is hold a series workshops, teaching basic hygiene and sanitation such as hand washing and other measures to prevent the spread of disease. “The workshops are important,” says Peter, “because not everyone realizes that there is a problem.” And then there is the task of convincing the community that dirt and bacteria are enough to actually clean their water.  “No one believes us when we say that everything that will filter the water is already in the water,” continues Peter.

But once that lesson is learned, lives are changed forever. The bio sand filters “really help the community” said Peter. “When we finish working with a community they always tell us that they don’t have the sickness like before. It’s helping and saving the lives of people.”

To read more about innovations that help to bring clean water to communities, improving health and livelihoods, see: Funding a Blue Revolution, Getting Water to Crops, Water Harvesting, Slow and Steady Irrigation Wins the Race, and Weathering the Famine.