BY MULUGETA GUDETA
From fashionable restaurants to ordinary eateries in Addis Ababa, an Ethiopian traditional food known as kitfo and originating in south central region where the Gurage ethnic group are living, is a relatively more expensive and delicious ‘super-food’ enjoying rising demands.
The raw materials that enter the preparation of kitfo are among others, kocho, a thin and flat bread produced from false banana, which is a staple in the above-indicated place. Judging from the number of kitfo bets, or places where kitfo is served as special or normal according to eaters’ preferences, kitfo has long become a food of the urban elites who can afford it.
However, the taste of kitfo and kitfo are more significant if we look at them from the point of view its social, cultural and economic implications. The false banana or enset as a drought resistant and easily cultivated tree species could be integrated into Ethiopia’s ongoing battle against hunger but this has not so far realized for many reasons, the lack of clear strategy and scientific approach to the problem being some of the constraints.
A discussion of Ethiopia’s food production potentials or the available food resources at one time or another is often bound to lead to consideration of certain biases or myths that tend to exaggerate or distort the facts. Yes, Ethiopia is rich in untapped food diversity and volume but it has never been the “bread basket” of Africa.
This popular myth sometimes knowingly or unknowingly spread by educated people, it was circulating around for many decades. This has sometimes led to misconceptions about Ethiopia’s food potentials and available resources for food production at a higher level.
However, one has to face the facts squarely. Ethiopian history is replete with stories of catastrophic famines and perennial food crises that led to horrendous human suffering and natural disasters through drought. If we look at the written records of the last 100 years alone, the scale of the food crisis has steadily increased rather than decreasing.
The late professor Pankhurst was an expert in the history of famine and cataclysmic food shortages in Ethiopia. He has written many books on the subject and his invariable conclusion was that Ethiopia could not shake off the scourge of famine because of political, economic, social and other factors that contributed to its aggravation.
The importance of harnessing natural resources like arable lands and water to develop agriculture in general and food production in general is a rather recent phenomenon. India could overcome its famines once and for all by conducting what Indians call a ‘Green Revolution’, in other words the radical use of science and technology to boost rural production targeting the poorest populations.
The methodology has proved efficient but it could not be replicated elsewhere in the world. Similarly, Ethiopia will have to find it own path out of famine through the use of traditional and modern techniques by constantly mobilizing our technologists and inventors to address the perennial food crises.
By the same token, the myth of Ethiopia being the “water tower of Africa” can only be accepted with certain reservations or corrections. Yes, Ethiopia is endowed with massive water resources, rivers and lakes in addition to huge seasonal rains. Yet, the available water resources in the country still remain largely unutilized in the food production sector.
Unfortunately this vital natural resource, as long as it is left unused, is simply a potential for food production and not something that would make a country the water tower of a continent. If the notion of ‘water tower’ is still relevant, it is on its way to being realized namely with the construction of the Great Renaissance Dam, that may be considered the first significant project of its kind that can boost Ethiopia’s profile as a water tower in the future.
Myths are good in literature as we realize from our reading of the Greek and Roman myths like “The Iliad and the Odyssey” that are part of the folk tales and imagined by the authors and not taken from reality. However, myths are not of any use in assessing the economic potential of a country because there is bound to be a contradiction between the myth and reality that can be seen and evaluated. As we said above, Ethiopia has great potentials of natural resources that can feed three or five times the present population of the country, according to some estimates. Yet, unless this assumption is supported by facts, it would only remain empty talk.
The problem is that while some facts are exaggerated others are overlooked or ignored. Let us take one example. A food type locally known as enset is produced from what is known as false banana through a laborious process of refinement that takes many hours of work and consumes so much energy because it is prepared by women. Studies indicate that enset serves as food for millions of people in Ethiopia as Wikipedia indicates by saying that “Domesticate enset provides food for 20 million people around a fifth of the entire Ethiopian population.”
According to the same source, enset comes from “a genus of flowering plants relative to tropical regions of Africa and Asia. It is one of the three genera in the banana family that includes the false banana or enset, an economically important food crop in Ethiopia.” According to related information, there are two types of enset, the first is the wild plant species and the second is the domesticated type. Enset looks like banana plant harvests like root vegetable and tastes like flatbread. Though the enset is a technical cousin of the banana, the tree offers a food that is much more potato-like.
Ethiopia and the entire Horn of Africa region are located in a geographically drought-prone region of the world that has been more recently devastated by lack of rains and due to climate change and other natural hazards. As we write this, millions of cattle herders in the south and eastern part of the country are facing a disastrous situation that led to acute food crisis and human migrations.
On the other hand we know that Ethiopia has many drought-resistant food sources like enset that could be introduced in drought –prone regions and save millions from suffering climatic catastrophe. By the way enset is not only good for human consumption but also an excellent source of fodder for animals. How many cattle are lost to drought and arid climate in the particularly sensitive regions? Hundreds of thousands if not millions.
There are at least two kinds of vulnerability to famine in Ethiopia. The first may be vulnerability due to lack of enough food production while all the conditions for good harvests, i.e. land, water and climate, are all present. This is leading to food shortages in normal times. But there is also famine caused by extraordinary conditions like drought, flooding, climate change, etc.
that are beyond human control and lead to the same catastrophic results whereby millions of people and cattle suffer food shortages and possible death. The good news is that even famines caused by climatic or human crisis can be contained through timely intervention before these crises occur by boosting the capacity to manage them developing drought-resistance crops or food types.
The question here is: how far can food plants like enset could go to alleviate some of the devastating effects of drought and famine, given the proven potential of the particular plant to serve as drought-resistant food source. A recent article by James S. Borrel and Olef Koch, and entitled “The ‘False Banana’ Feeding Millions” starts by asking a question: Could a Remarkable banana relative feed over 100 million people?”.
The authors say that, “Enset (Enset verticosum) is a wild African banana relative domesticated in the Ethiopian highlands adding that new research suggests that the crop could feed many more people across Ethiopia and perhaps the African continent.” The authors continue their analysis by saying that, “Feeding a growing population at a higher standard of living whilst weathering the impacts of climate change will test the capacity and resilience of our food systems. Although the scale of this challenge is unprecedented, human ingenuity is not…”
In the same article, the authors outline some of the wonderful features or characteristics of Enset by saying that, “Reaching ten meters tall, as few 15 plants can feed a person for a year. It has flexible harvest times, stores well and is relatively disease and drought resistant. The combination of attributes has earned it the name, ‘the tree against hunger’ amongst the communities that grow it. So why then is enset is grown in such a small region?”
The authors particularly raise an important question by saying, “Could enset help support the food security of more people particularly under climate change? We found that yes, has potential to be grown over a much larger area, expanding perhaps even 12-fold.” The authors conclude this important article by saying that, “Helping farmers and societies adapt to climate change, will be one of the major challenges of the 21st century –our crops and where we grow them will change whether we like it or not.”
Enset cultivation will therefore become a great challenge to Ethiopian African populations living in drought-prone regions and suffering from climate change that will inevitably become a challenge to human survival unless populations adapt their food cultures to the changing weather conditions and enset is no doubt the perfect candidate to be developed as ‘a tree against hunger’ that could feed more than 200 million people in Ethiopia alone.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SATURDAY 29 APRIL 2023
