Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Ethiopia accounts for twenty-four percent of African honey production. One of its most unique and flavorful honeys is produced only in the very northern part of the country, in the Mountains of Tigray, at an elevation of 2,300 meters above sea level.

Once a year, during the main rainy season, the rocky and arid mountains produce a short and diverse flowering period. A variety of blossoming indigenous plants found nowhere else in the world contribute to the honey’s distinct and sweet flavor. And the isolated region has, until recently, been relatively protected from land degradation and urban sprawl that has damaged bee populations in other parts of the country.

The honey is a traditional delicacy, served steamed with white bread as a festival meal and used to make tej, a honey-wine recognized as the national drink of Ethiopia. It is also a critical source of income for the region and producers sell the honey in both local and national markets.

Recently, though, uncontrolled deforestation—mostly as a result of land clearing for agricultural use—has lead to a decrease in rainfall, which has in turn lead to a decrease in honey production. Without the rain, there is no abundance of indigenous blossoms.

A project funded Slow Food International is helping bee keepers in the town of Wukro in central Tigray to preserve their livelihoods—and local biodiversity—by creating an incentive to protect local forests and plant habitat. Working with 17 bee keepers in the area, the Wukro White Honey Presidium is helping to streamline production, improve farmer access to markets, and increase awareness about the importance of preserving Tigray’s indigenous plants.

Slow Food has helped the farmers to establish a shared hygienic processing plant and a shop where they can sell honey directly to consumers. This gave the producers the collective power to establish fair prices and ensure the integrity of their final product. Enough glass jars to bottle an entire year’s worth of honey production were donated by Saint-Gobain Vetri, an Italian glass company. These jars were labeled by Slow Food to promote a distinct product that can be associated with the cooperative.

And bee keepers are pleased with the results. Each year, a successively larger training seminar is held with the Wukro beekeepers and neighboring communities to exchange information about processing, marketing, and preserving the region’s one of a kind honey.

To read more about crops indigenous to Africa see: Black Plum: Fruit, Timber, and Agroforestry, Safou: the “Butterfruit” , Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, and Monkey Oranges: Mouthwatering Potential.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

We think of deserts as dry wastelands incapable of food production. Surprisingly, there is often enough rainfall to support vegetation. The problem is that most of this water falls only over the course of one week and pools in aquifers a meter below the surface. A tree with a developed root system can survive from these aquifers, but seedlings need consistent moisture at the surface in order to fuel root growth toward these water sources. A week of rain simply isn’t enough. And if you dig deep enough to reach the water table, you destroy the natural capillaries in the soil that act as a permeable boundary to support the seed and transfer water.

Nature is full of examples of efficient solutions, and an unlikely model for success in retaining this moisture has been found in bird feces. When a bird consumes a seed and excretes it onto the dry soil of a desert, its excrement serves as a retention system for moisture, allowing roots to grow. The nascent root systems immediately begins penetrating the soil and growing toward the water below.

The vital role that bird excrement plays in the germination of plant seeds is the central inspiration for the Groasis, a deceptively simple invention that promises to revolutionize aforestation efforts in arid climates.

The Groasis uses incubation to deliver water over a time-period in tune with a seedling’s demand for water. Any precipitation from rainfall or evening condensation is collected from the fan-shaped roof of the device and stored in evaporation-proof containers. A small wick delivers a steady flow of water to the plant, gradually creating a water column in the soil to support long-term growth. The water also regulates the plant’s temperature, cooling it in the day-time heat and insulating it at night. When the plant is around two feet tall, it has already established a robust root system and can survive un-aided in the harsh climate.

AquaPro, the company behind the Groasis, has developed mechanized equipment to implement this growing system for large-scale rehabilitation projects. In 2010 alone there were fifteen aforestation projects in Kenya, the United States, France and Spain that used the Groasis to help deal with strip-mining rehabilitation, desertification, and other problems.

To read more about innovations that improve access to water, see: Funding a Blue Revolution, Water Out of Thin Air, and Slow and Steady Irrigation Wins the Race.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE .

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute.

Shallots (Allium cepa var. aggregatum), a relative of the onion, with a unique sweet and rich flavor, have long been appreciated for their use as a staple ingredient for many popular dishes. The nutritional and savory part of this vegetable is the bulb which grows underground and produces leaves, flowers, and fruits above ground.

In Mali, shallots have proven to be an economically beneficial cash crop, providing women in small villages a successful way to support their families. The dogon shallot is found in environmentally stressed land in the Bandiagarà escarpment between Mopti and Timbuktu. This area is home to the Dogon people, an ethnic group who have been intensely studied by anthropologists due to their unique culture. An increase in tourism in the area to visit the Dogon village and UNESCO World Heritage Site is creating a greater market for the dogon shallot.

The Dogon shallots are low in saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium and high in vitamin A, vitamin B6, manganese, vitamin C, folate, and potassium. The bulbs are used for food, spice and seasoning and can be used fresh, pickled, cooked, or fried. The vitamins and minerals present in the bulb have also prompted its use in medicines. In addition to being exported as a cash crop, the Dogon people also use the shallot for a variety of purposes. Dogon Somè is a condiment used regularly in the Dogon diet and consists of the shallot and other local ingredients such as, gangadjou, oroupounnà, and pourkamà. The women transform the leaves, flowers, and fruit of each plant into usable ingredients for dogon somè.

The economic success of the dogon shallot can be attributed, partly, to the recent involvement of USAID/Mali’s Integrated Initiatives for Economic Growth program (IICEM) with funds from the Global Food Security Response (GFSR). Prior to USAIDs involvement, the Dogons were previously unaware of how to properly cultivate the shallot. As a result, they would spoil or get moldy easily, making them hard to sell. USAID was able to provide farmers with appropriate fertilizer, application techniques, and access to technology. Technologies, such as new mechanized grinders, are increasing production from 50 kilograms a day to 1 ton per hour. Additionally, improved storage facilities have allowed better crop preservation and give the farmers the chance to wait for higher prices at market.

Greater efficiency in shallot harvesting has been substantial in the lives of the people who live in the villages, especially the women. After processing the product can be sold either dried with the leaves removed or in a fermented ball. The traditional method of drying involves the women grinding the shallots in a stone mortar, shaping the paste into pellets, and drying them in the sun. Some NGOs, including Slow Food International, have also promoted new drying methods, cutting the shallots into thin slices and drying them on lattices in the sun, that are less time consuming.

In 2009 USAID sent women from the village to a conference in Burkina Faso in order to share their experience and their shallots. The attendees at the conference enjoyed the shallots so much that the women won a first place prize of $1700 and one woman received an order for 25 tons of her delicious shallot.

To read more about crops indigenous to Africa see: Black Plum: Fruit, Timber, and Agroforestry, Safou: the “Butterfruit” , Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, and Lablab: The Bountiful, Beautiful Legume.
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Today is the Worldwatch Institute’s 15th Annual State of the World Symposium, hosted at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC. It is being live streamed on the Nourishing the Planet blog at 1:15PM (EST) for those unable to join the event in person. Bringing together leading thinkers in agricultural development, hunger, and poverty alleviation, the symposium takes place following the release of Worldwatch’s flagship publication, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.
Symposium keynote speakers and panelists include Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; David Beckmann, President, Bread for the World; Hans Herren, President, Millennium Institute; Sara Scherr, President and CEO, Ecoagriculture Partners; Catherine Alston, Cocoa Livelihoods Program Coordinator, World Cocoa Foundation; and Stephanie Hanson, Director of Policy and Outreach, One Acre Fund.

Also participating, in keeping with the project’s emphasis on ‘voices from the field,’ are two on-the-ground innovators from sub-Saharan Africa: Edward Mukiibi, co-founder and Project Coordinator of Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) in Uganda and Sithembile Ndema with the Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) in South Africa. The DISC project instills greater environmental awareness and understanding of nutrition, indigenous vegetables, and food culture in Uganda’s youth by establishing vegetable gardens at pre-school, day, and boarding schools. FANRPAN’s Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) project recently launched a series of Theatre for Policy Advocacy (TPA) campaigns in rural Malawi, using an interactive model to strengthen the ability of women farmers to advocate for appropriate agricultural policies and programs.

State of the World 2011 is full of similar stories of success and hope in sustainable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. The report draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty. It’s nearly a half-century since the Green Revolution, and yet a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. Since the mid 1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, the share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today. Drawing from the world’s leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 aims to help the funding and development community reverse this trend.

In Kibera, Nairobi, the largest slum in Kenya, for example, more than 1,000 women farmers are growing “vertical” gardens in sacks full of dirt poked with holes, feeding their families and communities. These sacks have the potential to feed thousands of city dwellers while also providing a sustainable and easy-to-maintain source of income for urban farmers. With more than 60 percent of Africa’s population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, such methods may be crucial to creating future food security. Currently, some 33 percent of Africans live in cities, and 14 million more migrate to urban areas each year. Worldwide, some 800 million people engage in urban agriculture, producing 15-20 percent of all food.

In 2007, some 6,000 women in The Gambia organized into the TRY Women’s Oyster Harvesting producer association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. Oysters and fish are an important, low-cost source of protein for the population, but current production levels have led to environmental degradation and to harmful land use changes over the last 30 years. The government is working with groups like TRY to promote less destructive methods and to expand credit facilities to low-income producers to stimulate investment in more-sustainable production.

State of the World 2011 provides new insight into the often overlooked innovations that are working right now on the ground to alleviate hunger and deserve more funding and attention. Its findings will be shared in over 20 languages with a wide range of global agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, policymakers, farmer and community networks, and the increasingly influential nongovernmental environmental and development communities.

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Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

It is hard to imagine modern life without coffee. But one thing that rarely crosses our minds as we sip our morning cups is that coffee is an African native.
Worldwide coffee is a $90 billion a year industry, there are 125 million people whose livelihoods depend on it, and 25 million of those are small-scale farmers in developing countries whose sole source of income is coffee production. Of the two globally cultivated coffee species (Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora)—commonly known as Arabica and Robusta—Arabica is the most admired and dominates 70 percent of all coffee production. The species naturally occurs exclusively in the isolated highland forests of Southern Ethiopia.

For thousands of years, people living in the Ethiopian highlands have traditionally been roasting coffee berries and grinding them in a mortar. Coffee is often served with hot water and sugar to guests as part of a ritual of hospitality and respect. It was not until around the sixth century that coffee spread to the Arabian Peninsula, and eventually throughout the world.

In the past 30 years—as a result of poverty and a growing local population—Ethiopia’s highland forests have been shrinking from deforestation for farmland, timber extraction, and the growing size of human settlements. Biodiversity is rapidly being lost in this delicate ecosystem. Recent research indicates that the natural diversity among the wild coffee cultivars in Ethiopia is high. Some of them have shown resistance to drought conditions—a trait that could become increasingly valuable. Many coffee growing regions across the continent and the world are becoming drier from climate change, and the livelihoods of millions of coffee growers are at stake. But as Ethiopia’s forests degrade, wild coffee—and a valuable genetic resource—is becoming endangered.

Hoping to improve diets and livelihoods by preserving indigenous foods around the world, Slow Food International is compiling a database of indigenous crops or the Ark of Taste. The ark is helping to rediscover, catalog, and popularize endangered crops that Slow Food believes have real commercial potential. Slow food has recently added wild coffee from the Ethiopian highlands—which it calls Harenna wild coffee after the forest where it grows—to the list.

The Harenna forest is located at an elevation of 1,800 meters in Ethiopia’s Bale National Park. Wild coffee gatherers typically harvest the berries by hand, competing with baboons who also eat them. They dry them in the sun on suspended nets and then sell them in local markets for low prices.

In 2007, Slow Food began training 64 gatherers on improved harvesting and drying techniques. Gatherers are also trained in organizational and business skills. The goal is to help locals produce a consistent, quality product that can then be marketed worldwide as a specialty product. Slow Food believes that wild coffee can sell for premium prices by emphasizing its natural and eco-friendly qualities. A certification process would be needed to authenticate the product’s origins and sustainable harvesting, although that process does not yet exist. The added economic value would not only improve the incomes of local people, it could also help slow deforestation as gatherers become better stewards to preserve their product.

The prices of coffee exported from Africa have steadily declined over the years, in part due to lack of competitiveness in the global market and limited access to premium sellers. Further development of a wild coffee industry—as well as research into the development of cultivars that are better suited to various coffee growing regions on the continent—could enhance the quality of African coffee and contribute to poverty alleviation.

To read more about crops indigenous to Africa see: Black Plum: Fruit, Timber, and Agroforestry, Safou: the “Butterfruit” , Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, Monkey Oranges: Mouthwatering Potential, The Green Gold of Africa, The Locust Bean: An Answer to Africa’s Greatest Needs in One Tree, and Lablab: The Bountiful, Beautiful Legume.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

In Southern Africa, there’s a stigma associated with HIV. Many people hide the disease from their friends and family and feel isolated from their communities. And, in addition to an array of health problems that go along with HIV, such as thrush and other chronic infections, many people with HIV in Southern Africa are not getting enough to eat.

“Often the connection between healthcare and nutrition is not made , even by health professionals” says GardenAfrica co-founder and Programmes Director, George McAllister. GardenAfrica is a UK-based non-profit organization that forges partnerships with like-minded African NGOs and CBOs. Together they develop appropriate training to assist families and communities to manage their resources more sustainably and establish organic gardens in homesteads, smallholdings, schools, hospitals and other public areas. “In the case of those families affected by HIV/Aids, you can’t get better and become active members of your family and community if you aren’t getting enough to eat and the right vitamins and nutrients.”

In 2006, GardenAfrica partnered with HIVSA (HIV South Africa), an organization that provides treatment, education, and support for people living with HIV, to create a 1 hectare training garden at the largest hospital in the southern hemisphere, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital. The garden, the two organizations hoped, would provide a source of inspiration for the hundreds of patients that passed through the hospital gates every day to take back to their homes, improving the health of their families and their communities.

“Hospitals and community clinics,” says McAllister, “lend themselves to strong garden projects. They have high walls and guards to protect the plants, and hundreds of people are coming and going every day. It’s also a unique opportunity to help people to make the connection between what they eat and their own health, creating sustainable approaches to healthcare and wellbeing.”

Working with HIVSA staff, and developing training courses with Permaculture organisation Ukuvuna, GardenAfrica selected patients from seven different clinics to participate in trainings and to help maintain the one hectare training garden. “We selected people from clinic support groups and then we developed gardening groups around each clinic. Each gardening group then selected two members to attend the regular trainings,” explained McAllister. The training participants were then responsible for taking the weekly lessons back to their clinics to share newly learned information about Permaculture, irrigation and water conservation, food, nutrition and indigenous medicinal plants with the rest of the group.

The patients participating in the project take home the tomatoes, spinach, chard, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, fruits, and herbs they are able to cultivate and harvest, and, in exchange, pass along their new skills to the daily stream of patients coming to the hospital for treatment. They also provide starter packets full of seeds and gardening instructions.

And while McAllister emphasizes that improved nutrition is critical for improving health only in addition to standard medical treatment, she also says that many useful remedies can be found in the garden. “One man was growing beautiful produce but still he was getting thinner and thinner,” says McAllister. “It turned out he had oral thrush.” Oral thrush is a secondary infection in the mouth that sometimes occurs in patients with HIV, causing the development of sores that are painful, making it difficult to eat. “We were able to introduce him to a plant that helped combat his symptoms and eventually they subsided, allowing him to eat again,” says McAllister. “He immediately began growing the plant (Bulbine frutuscens) in his project garden, and introduced it to other patients, teaching them how they can manage their own opportunistic infections, using plants as a readily available complement to anti-retroviral treatement”

Many of the clinics have feeding programs, daily meals for patients and anyone in need. But ‘feeding’, while essential, can be disempowering for many people. GardenAfrica project participants used the meals as an opportunity to give cooking demonstrations and introduce locally produced and prepared food. “These cooking lessons create a more positive feeding process, where people can learn about cultivation, harvesting and nutrition which they can apply at home” says McAllister. “This way people living with HIV are able to come together to learn, share stories and forge solutions to their own particular challenges. Skills are transferred by the garden team – but importantly, so knowledge and information is shared at many levels – generating confidence to address stigma & discrimination.”

To read more about how improved nutrition can improve health and livelihoods, see: Cultivating Health, Community and Solidarity, Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local, Honoring the Farmers that Nourish their Communities and the Planet, and Investing in Projects that Protect Both Agriculture and Wildlife.

Today the Worldwatch Institute launches its flagship publication, State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet in New York City. The report spotlights successful agricultural innovations and unearths major successes in preventing food waste, building resilience to climate change, and strengthening farming in cities. The press launch—the first of several release events being held in New York and DC this month—will feature remarks from Nourishing the Planet co-Directors Brian Halweil and Danielle Nierenberg; contributing authors Stephanie Hanson of the One Acre Fund and the Small Planet Institute’s Anna Lappé; as well as Worldwatch President Christopher Flavin.

It’s nearly a half-century since the Green Revolution and yet a large share of the human family is still chronically hungry. Since the mid 1980s when agricultural funding was at its height, the share of global development aid has fallen from over 16 percent to just 4 percent today. Drawing from the world’s leading agricultural experts and from hundreds of innovations that are already working on the ground, State of the World 2011 will help serve as a road map for the funding and development communities.

Over the last year, the Nourishing the Planet project has traveled to 25 sub-Saharan African nations—the places where hunger is the greatest and rural communities have struggled the most—to hear people’s stories of hope and success in agriculture. Africa has among the most persistent problems with malnutrition, but it also a rich and diverse breeding ground for innovations in agriculture. From oyster farmers in The Gambia to school gardens in Uganda to rotational grazing in Zimbabwe, State of the World 2011 draws from hundreds of case studies and first-person examples to offer solutions to reducing hunger and poverty.

In The Gambia, some 6,000 women organized into the TRY Women’s Oyster Harvesting Producer Association, creating a sustainable co-management plan for the local oyster fishery to prevent overharvesting and exploitation. The 15 communities, comprising nearly 6,000 people, agreed to close one tributary in their oyster territories for an entire year and to lengthen the “closed” season in other areas. They are also working together to educate the community about the benefits of mangrove restoration and building hatcheries to boost wild stocks. The improved quality and size of the resulting harvests are garnering higher prices at local markets, and the association is working on developing relationships with upscale hotels and restaurants that are interested in buying wholesale.

In Uganda, Developing Innovations in School Cultivation (DISC) program is integrating indigenous vegetable gardens, nutrition information, and food preparation into school curriculums to teach children how to grow local crop varieties that will help combat food shortages and revitalize the country’s culinary traditions. As a result, these students grow up with more respect—and excitement—about farming. At Sirapollo Kaggwass Secondary School, Mary Naku, a 19 year-old student, who is learning farming skills from DISC, said that she has gained leadership and farming skills. “As youth we have learned to grow fruits and vegetables,” she says, “to support our lives.”

And in South Africa and Kenya, pastoralists are preserving indigenous varieties of livestock that are adapted to the heat and drought of local conditions—traits that will be crucial as climate extremes on the continent worsen. In Maralal in the Northern region of Kenya, one group of Maasai pastoralists is working with the Africa LIFE Network to increase their rights as keepers of both genetic diversity and the land. Jacob Wanyama, coordinator for the African LIFE Network and advisor to the Nourishing the Planet Project, says Anikole cattle—a breed indigenous to Eastern Africa and traditionally used by pastoralists in the area for centuries—are not only “beautiful to look at,” but they’re one of the “highest quality” breeds. They can survive in extremely harsh, dry conditions—something that’s more important than ever as climate change takes a bigger hold on Africa. “Governments need to recognize,” says Wanyama, “that pastoralists are the best keepers of genetic diversity.”

Launched today at WNYC’s The Greene Space, the report includes a chapter on reducing food waste written by food activist Tristram Stewart, as well as chapter on how addressing the unique needs of women farmers, who in many parts of the continent represent 80 percent of small scale farmers, can improve livelihoods and diets for entire communities, written by Dianne Forte, Royce Gloria Androa and Marie-Ange Binwaho. State of the World 2011 provides new insight into the under-appreciated innovations that are working right now on the ground to alleviate hunger and deserving of more funding and attention.

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

The wild African black plum (vitex doniana) has great potential as a by-product of a revered—and useful—native tree. The greatest economic potential of the vitex trees probably lies in the wood and leaves. But black plums support diets and incomes throughout the life of the tree.

Black plums are common across tropical sub-Saharan Africa’s coastal savannas and savanna woodlands. The black plum tree is not domesticated, but it is widely utilized and protected and is often found at the center of West African villages. There is little scientific data on the tree, but African horticulturalists, livestock keepers, and foresters stand to benefit from in-depth research and commercial development.

The olive-shaped fruit has a sweet, prune-like taste with a hint of chocolate. It is believed to have high levels of vitamins A & B. They are usually eaten as snacks, either fresh or dried. Children are especially fond of collecting and snacking on the black plums. But during food shortages, the fruit becomes of vital nutritional and economic importance. In these periods it is sometimes cooked before eating. They are usually collected from the ground rather than picked from the tree and are sold in local markets when the fruits are abundant.

The fruit makes good quality jellies and jams as well as a black molasses. A beverage similar in flavor to coffee is also made from roasted fruits. Young, leafy shoots from the tree are picked, boiled, seasoned, and eaten like spinach.

In addition to its edibility, the black plum tree supports rural micro-economies and environmental health. The leaves, pods, and seeds make excellent fodder for goats, sheep, and cattle. The trees are especially utilized for livestock fodder during dry seasons and drought. Its long roots can reach deep groundwater pockets, which keeps its leaves green much longer than the grasses that livestock usually depends on.

Beekeepers value the tree as a base for their beehives. Abundant white flowers attract bees, and beekeepers like to hang hives in the branches or in a hollowed out trunk of a black plum tree.

The tree is used for a variety of medicinal purposes as well. The edible parts of the tree are traditionally prescribed for anemia, due to high iron and potassium content. Leaves are also eaten to treat dysentery. Bark extracts are believed to be useful treatments for jaundice, toothaches, leprosy, and other skin ailments. Some traditions use the bark to improve fertility in women.

The black plum is useful in agroforestry and organic farming. It is nitrogen fixing, meaning it adds nitrogen to the soils it grows in. Whether the tree is growing throughout the field or along boundaries, crops can benefit from natural soil nutrients. Shade from the tree can protect from over-exposure to the tropical sun. Leaves from the tree are also used as nutrient-rich mulch.

The tree also promotes natural biodiversity. The fruit and leaves support wildlife. Its nitrogen fixing abilities encourage soil health and its deep roots protect soils from erosion, benefitting other plant life. In this way, it could be utilized for rebuilding degraded native ecosystems.

Timber harvested from black plum trees is medium hard and is similar to teak. It is termite resistant, making it favored as a building material. It is known to be used for making furniture, boats, chairs, and drums and is good for carving. It also makes quality firewood and charcoal.

To read more about crops indigenous to Africa see: Safou: the “Butterfruit” , Traditional Food Crops Provide Community Resilience in Face of Climate Change, Monkey Oranges: Mouthwatering Potential, The Green Gold of Africa, Fonio: Africa’s Oldest Cereal Needs More Attention, The Locust Bean: An Answer to Africa’s Greatest Needs in One Tree, and Lablab: The Bountiful, Beautiful Legume

Connect with Nourishing the Planet on Facebook by clicking HERE.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

GardenAfrica, a non-profit organization based in the UK and working in southern Africa that helps families and communities establish organic gardens in small private plots, schools, hospitals and other public areas, prefers that its work be described as solidarity rather than charity. “Charity is all too often about externally imposed solutions, solidarity is a partnership of equals,” says its website.

Working with farmers in both rural and urban areas in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and South Africa, GardenAfrica provides training and materials to improve food production as well as to help preserve local biodiversity, soil quality, and water conservation. The organization works closely with farmers to help develop “garden plans” that will best suit the natural resources available, as well as the dietary and medicinal needs of the farmers and their families.

Throughout much of southern Africa, high food prices have limited what is actually available to eat for families living on less than USD$1.25 per day. Many families are forced people to make do with one or two staple crops, like maize or cassava. But without critical vitamins and minerals, families are at greater risk for illness and disease, such as stunted growth and development and osteoporosis. To fight these problems, GardenAfrica emphasizes the medicinal and nutritional value of various local vegetable varieties, encouraging farmers to plant a diverse range of plants in order to provide year-round harvests and improve nutritional value of each harvest.

Once a family is producing enough food to take care of their own needs–the average garden is cultivated on a plot that is only 100 square meters in size—the organization helps establish that family as a source of information, guidance and support for other members of the community.

In Swaziland, a farmer named Futhi Fakudze was caring for a house full of 17 people. With 11 children and six adults to feed, Futhi was spending 250 Swazi Lilangeni—or about USD$30.00—per month on groceries. But a year ago she participated in a training session with GardenAfrica in Swaziland and learned how to better take advantage of the natural resources available to her in order to improve her soil and her yields. Now she is able to produce almost all of her household’s monthly dietary needs in her small backyard. And she has even started another project garden in a separate 200 square meter plot where she is growing peppers, tomatoes, leaks, chard, spinach, beets, lettuce, carrots, and mango.

And beyond just taking care of her own family, Futhi is also helping the rest of her community learn from her training. After passing her new knowledge on to her husband, who helps her take care of the two garden plots, Futhi is also working with 6 of her neighbors who regularly stop by to help out and learn from her new “garden plan.” Soon enough they will have their own garden plans with which to grow their own food and share with the rest of the community.

To learn more about farming techniques that improve production and diets as well as soil quality, water conservation and biodiversity, see: Cultivating an Interest in Agriculture and Wildlife Conservation, Malawi’s Real Miracle, Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops, Finding ‘Abundance’ in What is Local, Honoring the Farmers that Nourish their Communities and the Planet, and Investing in Projects that Protect Both Agriculture and Wildlife.

Crossposted from the Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet.

Spider plant (Cleome gynandra)—also known as African cabbage, spider wisp, and cat’s whiskers—is a wild green leafy vegetable that grows all over tropical Africa, Asia, and the Americas. The African native most likely originated in Eastern Africa, in Ethiopia and Somalia. It is not formally cultivated, but among poor rural communities—especially in the Kalahari and Namib regions of Southern Africa—young leaves are collected, cooked, and eaten like spinach.

Spider plant is generally considered a weed, plaguing maize and bean fields in Kenya and other countries. But called mwangani in Swahili, spider plant is highly nutritious and is well adapted to many African ecosystems.

High in vitamins and micronutrients, spider plant contributes to a healthy diet for many rural Africans with limited food budgets. It is known to have high levels of beta-carotene and vitamin C. Often vitamin C is lost after cooking, but spider plant retains the vitamin better than many other vegetables. It also contains significant amounts of calcium, magnesium, and iron. When cooked in oil, a serving can contain over 450 percent of the daily vitamin A requirement and 72 percent when cooking oil isn’t used.

The plant is also high in protein and has more amino acids than groundnut. High levels of antioxidants in the vegetable may help prevent diseases like diabetes, cancer, and heart diseases.

Although spider plant is can be dried and stored for up to two years, storage can greatly reduce its nutritional value. Most often the plant is cooked and eaten fresh. Leaves, stems, pods, and flowers are boiled in water or milk or fried in a pan with oil. The addition of milk reduces the natural bitterness of the leaves. Another common method to reduce bitterness is to boil the leaves, discard the water, and then add them to other ingredients in a stew or side dish with other vegetable and spices. In East Africa, fresh leaves are used in mashed foods. Dried leaves are sometimes ground and mixed into weaning foods for babies. In Zambia, crushed groundnuts are often added to a spider plant dish to enhance flavor.

The wild vegetable is also consumed in South and Southeast Asian countries. In India, it is eaten as an herb in boiled dishes and in sauces. In Thailand, it is eaten as a pickled vegetable called pak-sian-dong.

The seeds of the spider plant are high in oil content. The oil can be extracted by pressing and does not require refining. After pressing, the remaining seed cake can be used for animal feed. Whole seeds can be used to feed chickens and other birds. Cows, camels, horses, and wild game animals graze on wild spider plants, and the leaves can be fed to livestock as forage.

Both the leaves and seeds are used in indigenous medicine in many countries. In Uganda, for example, the plant is used to speed up the process of childbirth and ease labor pains. After giving birth, some women eat spider plant to regain strength and increase lactation. In other countries, spider plant remedies are used to treat headaches, stomach aches, constipation, vomiting, diphtheria, vertigo, pneumonia, and ear infection. The vegetable is also fed to boys after circumcision, as it is believed to help replenish blood. The leaves have anti-inflammatory properties and preliminary scientific studies have suggested that spider plant may be useful in the development of a treatment for arthritis.

Spider plant is known to have insecticidal properties as well. A spider plant leaf extract, mixed with water, can be sprayed on other crops to reduce aphid and thrip populations. Intercropping of spider plants with cabbage has been known to reduce diamondback moth and thrip attacks. In rose greenhouses in Kenya, spider plants are sometimes intercropped to reduce red spider mites.

The spider plant is a hardy native, and can withstand high daytime temperatures, intense sunlight, and drought. It thrives in sandy and degraded soils, although it does not do well in water logged or heavy clay soils. It is a fast growing plant and in the right conditions can be harvested in as few as three weeks after planting, making it important for food security for rural populations.

Research and development of spider plant as a crop could have multiple benefits. Yields are usually high, with little need for irrigation or added chemicals in many areas throughout Africa. Nutritional benefits are significant, and there is an established spider plant culinary tradition in many African cultures. In Southern and Eastern Africa, spider plant is sold in both rural and urban markets when the plant is in abundance, proving that the crop can be a profitable food product. Further economic benefit could come from the development of medicinal products and insecticides, and seed oils could be used in soaps, biofuels, or other commercial products.