‘Fonio just grows naturally’: could ancient indigenous crops ensure food security for Africa?

theguardian.com:

With sweeps of his arm, Jean-Pierre Kamara showers handfuls of tiny seeds over the freshly ploughed land near his village in Senegal’s southern foothills. A team of young men ahead of him loosen more of the clay soil for sowing, while older villagers trail behind, raking the earth back over the seeds.

Only breaking at midday to refuel on peanuts and palm wine, the village works methodically as a unit to grow fonio – a precious grain crucial to their diets that only takes days to germinate and can be harvested in as little as six weeks. Though laborious, growing fonio, one of Africa’s oldest cultivated grains, is simple and reliable, say Kamara’s Bedik people.

Women prepare the evening meal, with fonio as the main ingredient

It grows naturally, they insist, where mainstream crops such as wheat and rice are harder to cultivate. It is also well adapted to the climate, nutritious, tastes good and can be stored far longer than other grains.

“If you put in front of me some fonio and also something made of maize, I’ll push aside the other because the fonio is much healthier. There are no chemicals used; it just grows naturally and then we harvest it. We don’t add anything,” says Kamara.

A field full of young fonio crops

Farmers plough the fields and prepare the soil for sowing fonio seeds, which can be grown in rough, dry soil

The benefits of fonio are so marked that academics and policymakers are now calling for the grain – alongside other indigenous foods, such as Ethiopia’s teff, as well as cassava and various millets and legumes – to be embraced more widely across Africa to improve food security.

The move comes as the UN warns that countries in the Horn of Africa are facing severe hunger, while many others have been hugely affected