Range of food crops will help feed a healthier nation

Amajor part of Zimbabwe’s present agricultural revolution is increasing the range of crops grown, both for food and for cash, spreading the risks of crop failure, opening new opportunities for farmers, and increasing the variety available in the average and very conservative Zimbabwean diet.

On the food side, the traditional grains, the ones indigenous to Africa and automatically adapted to African climate and soils, have been pushed hard.

They are now the only cereals grown outside irrigation schemes in natural regions four and five, where even in a bad year they will produce a harvest, while a farmer in those zones needs an exceptional year to get any sort of maize harvest.

There is still a degree of consumer resistance to these indigenous grains, and even those who grow them like to be able to take part in the Government programme of a swop with maize up to a reasonable limit for family consumption.

Obviously more work needs to be done on the marketing side with the stress on using these grains in traditional dishes being emphasised in many recent competitions.

A second crop that has always been around, but not grown to full advantage is the sweet potato. While it cannot cope with drought during the stage when the tubers set, it does not need the best soils and has a fairly short growing season, important now in Zimbabwe with one of the major climate changes in recent years being a much shorter growing season.

So the major effort being made by the Ministry of Lands, Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Rural Development to identify and distribute suitable vine varieties on a wide scale is welcome and makes a lot of sense.

The fact that the ministry has been able to produce these feedstock vines free of viruses is a huge bonus, removing one of the major risks for farmers.

While the farmers themselves are likely to eat part of their crop, sweet potatoes should ha eve far wider markets across the country, and a lot more people need to try them.

The very vaguely related potato is now fairly popular and sells well, so there should be a very good market for the far larger harvests of sweet potatoes now expected.

A third crop being considered, although at present there is no major drive to grow it, is cassava. The experimental work and the introduction of this crop more widely should certainly be pursued, but carefully as it requires the transfer of a fair battery of skills to the farmers from the moment of harvest.

These can be built up in communities, and the fact that cassava is one of the major food crops of West Africa, with Nigeria the world’s top producer, and is grown in many African countries shows that the pluses easily outweigh the minuses, which in any case can be overcome.

One the positive side the crop can grow in poor soils and is drought tolerant, and that describes a wide swathe of Zimbabwe. As a food crop it produces a little more food energy per hectare than maize. So the pluses are large.

But it can be susceptible to a wide range of plant diseases, although a lot of research has been done globally to minimise this. More importantly it needs to be processed properly and processed quickly after harvest.

The need for rapid processing is the short shelf-life of the unprocessed tuber, especially if has been damaged in harvest, but even the best quality tubers need to be processed within three weeks. The processed products have far higher shelf lives.

As the crop is introduced and spread across Zimbabwe, there will need to be explicit training for communities on how to process the crop. Unprocessed cassava is poisonous, containing and generating cyanide compounds in concentrations that can harm humans. Over the centuries a variety of processes have been developed that render cassava safe, but these have to be learned.

Many are reasonably simple and do not require sophisticated technology or materials, and can be easily learned; so there is no need for Zimbabweans to reinvent the wheel, but many will need to learn.

Some of the processing ends up with the fresh tuber grated or sliced, and this processing is done between digging up the root and eating it. The storage is in the ground, rather than harvesting the tuber and then trying to keep it fresh on the surface.

Other processes produce a starch flour, known in many cuisines and places as tapioca. This has a longish shelf life and can be used for a wide variety of dishes.

There is cassava bread, for example, and many other dishes. In some countries most of the cassava is eaten fresh; in others it is mostly processed into the tapioca form.

In some it is most eaten by people, in others it is often an animal feed or even an industrial raw material. So markets in Zimbabwe can be varied.

One important point is that this production of cassava flour is often a village industry, where the processing has to be done so soon after harvest that there is no time to move the crop to huge factories in large cities. So instead the crop is a driver of rural industrialisation.

There is a tendency in much of Zimbabwe to have a fairly limited diet, in the sense that while nutritious it does not have a wide variety of inputs and ingredients.

The sort of work now being done by agricultural experts is extending the range of products that are readily available and the range of foods that can be cooked in any kitchen.

What is perhaps important is not to ask people to give up any particular sort of food, but to become more adventurous and extend the range of dishes they eat with their families and friends.

This will have several benefits: a far lower risk of food shortages since there will be more on offer, better markets for farmers since they will be able to sell what they grow, regardless of the sort of climate they have to cope with, and a healthier population using the variety to ensure that they get the natural nutrients they need for at least one source, and preferably several.