Zimbabweans eating wrongly, need to revamp food value web: Experts
ZNowIMBABWE should review its existing food system to address several challenges linked to seed, health and nutrition. that’s the advice of food and agro-ecology experts who believe we are eating wrong, and even growing our food the wrong way.
In an article published on the Pelum Zimbabwe website, Harare agro-ecologist John Wilson, who has over 30 years of experience working in food systems, spoke of the need to revamp Zimbabwe’s food value chains — even though he refused to refer to them as such. He stated the need to promote the “consumption of nutrientdense foods in sufficient quantities.”
“We need to think about the whole food value web. I prefer the phrase, ‘food value web’ rather than ‘food value chains’ because chains are what we currently have where farmers are chained to food production systems where they do not benefit”, Wilson was quoted as saying.
“For example, presently you can get small grains in supermarkets but they are exorbitantly expensive, so we need to think, ‘how do we get small grains to consumers in a regular way but also in a way in which the farmers benefit from a decent price’ but the consumers do not have to spend too much?’
Food specialists say Zimbabweans are eating wrongly and must make a return to traditional diets–whole unprocessed foods, with limited chemicals and preservatives in their production and manufacturing.
Such foods include whole grains with roughage such as mhunga (pearl millet), mapfunde (sorghum) and zviyo (finger millet), key parts of the diet before the coming of white settlers in 1890.
Traditional diets tended to lean more towards natural vegetables like nyevhe (spider flower leaves), muboora (pumpkin leaves), munyemba (cowpea leaves) and mowa (wild spinach). That’s what Mandivamba Rukuni, a professor of agriculture and former dean of agriculture at the University of Zimbabwe, told me in a past interview.
Meat was consumed in moderation, he said then, with the “road runner” — a type of indigenous chicken — appearing in many dishes, in many homes. Mr Mandivamba said at the time: “Over the last Century, Africans are increasingly suffering from lifestyle diseases, which in the past were peculiar to industrialised societies of Europe and the US.”
He continued: “With urbanisation and increases in income, people consume more animal products and animal fat, leading to challenges with cholesterol, heart problems and hypertension. It is now proven that most foods produced using the industrial model - both crops, vegetables or fruits and meat - use too many chemicals, medicines, processed animal feeds, which all contain cancerous agents and other toxins.”
For native Zimbabweans, non-communicable diseases were almost unheard of during the early years of, and before colonialism because “the traditional diets of the ancient Bantu people were conducive to good healthy living.”
But everything changed with the wholesale introduction of maize by Europeans in the 19th Century, considered a cheaper option to feeding the thousands of forced labourers working in the mines, industry and on farms.
Maize, now the Zimbabwean staple, is rich in starch. However, refined mealie meal or rice — too refined as we see today — takes out all the roughage out of the food, leaving pure starch, almost pure sugar when that carbohydrate is digested, health experts have said.
In the Pelum Zimbabwe article, John Wilson, the Harare agro-ecologist, elaborated how crucial it was to stimulate demand for small grains through market systems that link directly with consumers. That way, farmers are incentivised to produce more of such crops, he said.
“Currently, the demand is already there because of an increase in cases of diabetes in Zimbabwe. Most diabetic patients are being advised by doctors to eat small grains and other healthy foods, so there is an opportunity,” Wilson explained.
“We have good examples like in Gutu where finger millet production has grown significantly in the last 10 years. We need to take farmers from elsewhere to Gutu to learn and take the experience back to their own communities and start pushing the production of small grains,” he added.
Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (Pelum) Zimbabwe works with farmers to end poverty and boost farm output mostly by using eco-friendly means. In Chimanimani, Pelum Zimbabwe has in the past four years worked with many smallholder farmers to grow and increase small grains yield. One of the farmers engaged by the organisation is Peace Nyakazeya, 43, a widowed mother of six, who has received training and knowledge on growing traditional and open pollinated varieties (OPVs).
Ms Nyakazeya, historically a maize farmer, at first expressed some apprehension at growing small grains, which are generally drought-tolerant, a key characteristic at a time of frequent and intense climate change-induced droughts.
“Before I started working with TSURO Trust (a partner of Pelum), I only grew hybrid maize. I didn’t grow any small grains. I viewed small grains as labour intensive and seed for poor people,” Nyakazeya told Pelum Zimbabwe.
“I started growing small grains because the seed is easily available, accessible and affordable. Small grains are also not easily attacked by pests and diseases and they are drought tolerant. I also realised that small grains are very nutritious and they taste better,” she explained.
Nyakazeya continued:“In the last farming season I conducted some experiments in my field. I planted hybrid maize in half of the field and OPV maize and Millet in the other half. I observed that the hybrid maize cobs looked appealing to the eye but upon harvesting, a lot of the maize cobs were rotten.
I harvested more from OPV seed. My neighbours witnessed my success and asked for OPV and small grain seed which I gave free of charge.”
God is faithful.