Los Angeles’s Erewhon, one of the world’s most expensive grocery stores, is a favorite among celebrities and personal chefs. It’s known for lining its shelves with upmarket pro- duce, focusing on items that are both certified or- ganic and ethically-sourced. Erewhon attracts those seeking the latest, trendsetting ingredients and now, there’s a new supergrain on-shelf everyone is pick- ing up – it’s called fonio.
But here’s the thing, fonio is far from new. According to the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), it’s the continent’s oldest cultivated cereal grain. Grown in West Africa for thousands of years, archaeologists found fonio buried in tombs inside the Egyptian pyramids. The Dogon, a Mali culture, called fonio po – the seed of the universe.
But how fonio, an almost forgotten African crop, ended up in Ameri- can supermarkets, is really the story of Chef Pierre Thiam.
Thiam is an award-winning Senegalese chef, author, activist and the founder of Yolélé (a Fulani term of exuberance used through- out West and Central Africa), a company that advocates for small- holder farmers in the Sahel region. The company’s signature product, Yolélé Fonio, is what Erewhon, Whole Foods and other grocers in the United States are selling.
Cash crops
“Colonization played a big role in disrupting our agriculture,” explains Thiam. With colonization came a shift to cash crops. Instead of growing fonio, Senegalese farmers were forced to grow peanuts. And in countries like Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, the focus was cocoa. “In Senegal, they brought what we call broken rice, the debris that is the result of processing rice in southeast India,” says Thiam. Broken rice, which was once animal feed in countries like Vietnam and Cambodia, was shipped to Sene- gal by French colonial authorities. “We still use broken rice in our national dishes – we prefer it to our indigenous rice,” he says. “It’s a brainwashing that happened that got us to prefer everything that was brought in by the West. And because our farmers were growing peanuts, they were not growing enough of the indigenous crops anymore.” Going after the money coming in from peanut agriculture is one of the reasons Senegal is still importing broken rice from Asia. “We have a grass agriculture, but we still depend on broken rice. We haven’t figured out a way to increase the agriculture of crops like fonio and millet,” says Thiam. “We’ve switched our diets, eat- ing bread every day that’s made out of wheat we don’t grow.” Globally, maize, rice and wheat make up 50% of the world’s global calorie intake.
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Based in Nairobi, Zoë Karl-Waithaka, Managing Director and partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), explains the reason this happened was the Green Revolution. “A huge amount of investment went into driving food security around the world. We were able to get more calories into the food system but they’re not very diverse,” she says. “As a result of that, we started shifting away from crops that were inherent to certain kinds of landscapes, crops that could grow more easily and provide other benefits like being more nutrient-dense.”
Lost, but not forgotten
These ancient grains, which nourished African communities for generations, are now called ‘lost’ or ‘or- phan’ crops. “Underutilized, minor, neglected – these are all words that refer to this type of crop that had a larger portion of our diets historically. And these crops are critical, not only for biodiversity but also for nutri- tion,” says Karl-Waithaka. Africa is not the only continent with agro-biodiversity issues. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that since the 1900s, 75% of plant genetic diversity has been lost and today, 75% of the world’s food is generated from only 12 plant species (and five animal species).
“They’re still around, they’re not lost, but they can be lost because they’re disappearing at a fast rate,” adds Thiam. The United Nations (UN) Economic Commission for Africa has projected that as extreme heat events increase, crop yields across the continent could decrease by 20% by 2050. “If you think about how our climate is changing and all the heat waves we’re seeing around the world, why do we need to go and engineer a crop to be drought and heat-tolerant?” asks Karl-Wait- haka. “We already have crops with those qualities, so why not work on making them more productive.”
Fonio, like sorghum, millet and Bambara groundnut, is better for the climate. Fonio grows on marginal lands and is pest-resistant (unlike millet which birds love so farmers must put down nets to keep them away). “The small farming communities are still growing fonio because they rely on it in times of famine. They know that if the rain is inconsistent, they can rely on fonio,” says Thiam. As well as being drought-resistant, fonio grows incredibly fast, reaching maturity in two months. “When the harvest is bad, they can rely on fonio. That’s why they call it ‘hungry rice’. It’s the rice that comes when you need it and it feeds the people,” he adds.
A green revolution
One of fonio’s biggest selling points is that it is gluten-free, but Thiam explains that the grain is also incredibly nutritious, rich in both cysteine and methionine, two amino acids not found in other major grains. Fonio has calcium iron, magnesium, phosphorus and zinc and is also a good source of fiber and thiamine. “These grains are good for the planet and good for the consumer,” says Thiam, who explains that a climate-friendly crop like fonio could also help corporations meet their sustainable development goals (SDGs). Karl-Waithaka is also encouraged by the fact that food systems are now a part of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP) agenda. In addition to this, the UN General Assembly declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets, hoping to raise awareness for this sustainable African grain group. “For systems to shift, it will take funding and high-profile visibility of this need. And I would say we’re at the start,” she says.
Getting fonio into agricultural supply
Chains is a great opportunity for Senegalese farmers – provided the right policies are put in place to protect the seeds.
Thiam’s concern is that fonio will follow the same path as quinoa, an Andean ancient crop that’s now cultivated worldwide. Even though quinoa has made farmers in Bolivia wealthier, their diets are becoming Westernized as more of the crop is exported and not consumed. In some regions, the grain is outpricing the market and those who grow it can no longer afford to eat it themselves.
Small farmers cannot compete with the intensive agriculture practices. “A big part of the challenge is, as a farmer, you’re not going to grow something if you don’t have somebody to sell it to,” adds Karl-Waithaka. To make fonio a success, Thiam realized that he would need to involve the entire community and, if possible, create a movement. This is how the Lost Crops Festival started, a strategic way to celebrate African grains like fonio while bringing together stakeholders, farmers, chefs, and research institutes. “We wanted everyone to be in the room so that the silos are removed. Farmers, for example, don’t know what research is going on but the research should be around the farmers,” says Thiam.
Inviting world-class musicians like Baaba Maal to the festival, Thiam’s goal is to celebrate agriculture and show people that these once-forgetting crops are a solution to monoculture and a farming system that has only increased greenhouse gas emissions over time while limiting global diets. “The ultimate beneficiaries are the small farming communities that have kept these crops alive for millions of years. It’s also important for food sovereignty because in Africa, we are still a net food importer,” adds Thiam, who says that celebrating grains like fonio is not only about nutrition but it goes back to the rhythm of traditional agriculture. The global food system became a big industrial monster, and the deeper cultural meaning was lost. He says: “It wasn’t nourishment anymore. The soul was gone, and we need to claim it.”
Fork To Farm
Fonio is an easy crop to grow – it requires no fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation or chemical inputs. It’s incredibly resilient but processing it can be problematic. Fonio has a skin that needs to be removed but since the standards of processing haven’t been improved in Senegal, it takes a lot of manual work and as a result, there’s post-harvest waste. Unlike wheat, which has been industrialized and has huge machines to process it, smaller grains like fonio have not been part of global food systems. The R&D is not there. “It’s a challenge making fonio accessible but there’s such a high waste,” says Thiam. This is one of the reasons why Thiam started his company Yolélé. Even though he grew up in Dakar, he didn’t have access to these grains. It was only when he traveled into the deep South of Senegal, Kédougou, for research for his cookbook, that he came across farmers serving fonio. Thiam wondered why such a delicious and nutritional grain wasn’t a world-class crop. He also knew for American consumers, gluten-free was a huge selling point. “And I said, let’s make it desirable. Let’s make it sexy,” laughs Thiam.
Instead of focusing on farm to fork, he took a reverse approach, creating a brand to tell the story of these crops. “We knew that we could create a demand for these crops. We are not only selling the grains, but a variety of products derived from the grain as well as using other ingredients that grow in the region,” says Thiam. From baobab leaves to moringa and dawadawa, Yolélé products not only include plants and are traditionally used in West African cuisine, it is helping fonio to enter new industries. One of Thiam’s newest endeavors is beer. Through Brew- ing for Impact, a global initiative led by Garret Oliver, a brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, it was discovered that the fonio grain was the perfect addition to beer.
This led to both Guinness and Carlsberg launching fonio beers, bringing the total to nine breweries working (including one in China) using fonio. “Now that the demand is real, the goal is to create de- mand in other industries,” says Thiam.
Even when fonio is used as a tiny per- centage in other products, it will have major impact – provided they contract the small farmers. “If you really want to transform markets, then you have to think a market-based mindset,” says Karl- Waithaka. “This means not just giving seeds and fertilizers to farmers but think- ing about the businesses that are going to buy this, the products they’re going to create, and the consumers they’re going to sell to.” On Thiam’s side, this means meeting the demand by supporting the farmers to improve productivity in a more sustainable way. “But most importantly, we need to innovate in the processing standards,” he says, adding that they’re only processing one tonne of fonio a day. To improve yield, he hired a milling manufacturing company to design equipment that will improve processing times to two tonnes per hour, and reduce the post-waste harvest.
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