Vegetables rich in protein and essential vitamins and
minerals, perfectly adapted to Africa's soils and changing climate exist in
Africa. They exist thanks not to the genius and beneficence of a foreign
company, but rather through millennia of interactions between Africa's farmers
and its landscape. And while their popularity waned in recent decades as
urbanization has swept through the continent, they're gaining renewed interest
from food-security experts. Unlike "exotic" (i.e., non-native to
Africa) vegetables like kale and cabbage, these crops are adapted to Africa's
soils and growing conditions. African vegetables like the leaves of amaranth,
pumpkin, and cowpea (black-eyed pea) plants outshine rival western greens that
have been introduced into African agriculture over the past century. Then
there's the leaves of the moringa tree, native to Africa and parts of Asia,
which deliver three times more vitamin A than carrots, seven times more vitamin
C than oranges, and twice the protein of cow's milk, per 100 grams.
Of course, spiderplant and cowpea leaves are a long way from
solving Africa's nutritional problems. As of 2013, indigenous vegetables
accounted for just 6 percent of Kenya's total vegetable market. Despite growing
demand production is constrained by the same factors that haunt African food
security broadly: poor infrastructure (roads, rail, etc.) for bringing fresh
food from farm to market, along with a dearth of investment in research and
development. There are no simple answers, no silver bullets, to the problem of
ensuring a robust food supply on a warming planet with a growing population.
But it's important to remember that the best, cheapest solutions aren't
necessarily the ones that emerge from patent-seeking laboratories.
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