Submitted by K.L. Hlaba on Fri, 05/11/2021 - 15:06
Fonio: A case study.
In this inaugural Forgotten Crops Society Dialogue, Chef Pierre Tham, a Senegal-raised, New York City-based chef, author, restaurateur, social entrepreneur and culinary ambassador and Professor Bruno Gerard, an agronomist who currently leads the agrobioscience program at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Morocco, discussed fonio, an African heritage grain that is considered the continent’s oldest cultivated cereal. This Dialogue was facilitated by Associate Professor Michel Ghanem of the agrobioscience program at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University.
Chef Pierre described his career trajectory from Senegal to the USA. He initially went to the USA to study the sciences, but instead found his passion in cooking. He later opened his own catering business and restaurant, which led to writing his first cookbook. He founded Yolele, a food company, due to the difficulty of sourcing the Senegalese ingredients listed in his cookbook. Yolele additionally assists small farming communities in Africa to market their crops globally.
Fonio is a forgotten crop that is delicious and versatile, and can grow in poor soil. Promoting the consumption of fonio globally also helps to diversify diets and assists small impoverished farming communities in West Africa with creating a market for their crops. Yolele also actively encourages fonio farmers to grow other crops, such as Bambara beans, sorghum and millet, to dissuade them from growing fonio as a monocrop.
The discussion further centred around the different varieties of fonio, improving the crop's accessibility by lowering the retail price through improved production and processing, protecting the profitability of the grain for farmers, and more. Please find the rest of this fascinating discussion here.
Please find a related Ted Talk by Chef Pierre here.
Image: screengrab from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjtCDgjxRAw