MALI: Agricultural projects in rural Mali develop new strains of sorghum to fend off hunger and malnutrition

Record ID: 453166

  • Title: MALI: Agricultural projects in rural Mali develop new strains of sorghum to fend off hunger and malnutrition
  • Date: 26th July 2008
  • Summary: WOMAN AND CHILDREN IN VILLAGE
  • Embargoed: 10th August 2008 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Mali
  • Country: Mali
  • Topics: Industry,Lifestyle
  • Reuters ID: LVACQP38BDBR5GABFRTK3FHBN5O3
  • Story Text: As millions of people around the continent face hunger due to soaring food and fuel prices, agricultural projects in rural Mali are helping farmers develop new and hardier strains of sorghum, one of the country's traditional staples.
    In the village of Tenya, 240 kilometres from Mali's capital Bamako, global food prices don't have much of an impact, because here, everyone grows their own food.
    They plant maize, groundnut and rice. But their main staple is sorghum, a type of millet.
    The women process the sorghum once it's been harvested: first into flour, and then into a meal for the family. Fatouamata Camera is making a breakfast porridge -known as 'bouille' [PRON.: bwee]- that is eaten in the morning and throughout the day.

    "For us sorghum is the most important food because it produces much more flour than maize," said Fatoumata Camera, a Tenya Village resident.
    But processing the sorghum grains removes the husks, which contain most of the vitamins and minerals.
    Dillo Fatimata Cissé is an Agricultural Engineer who works with the governmental Rural Economy Institute.
    They are running a project to improve nutrition in Mali's south eastern Mandé region, and Fatimata visits villages like Tenya to find out how nutritious the local food is.

    "We discovered following our research in the region that there was a lack of iron in the diet. Many people here suffer from anaemia. The local diet also lacks vitamin A, and zinc," Cissé said.
    She said the women of the village use sorghum to make a watery porridge, and suggested that they add extra ingredients like lemon juice, sugar or peanut butter.
    Fatimata also stressed ways of improving the nutritional value of the porridge itself, by letting the sorghum seeds germinate before they're eaten.
    An ongoing research to improve the quality of the seeds used by the farmers is taking place.
    Top of the wish-list of farmers like Fatoumata Camera's husband, Sekou Camera, is to find a seed variety that reaches adulthood quicker than the traditional seed that they are using at the moment.

    "The problem we have with this variety is its maturation period.
    For it to reach maturity it takes five months. And we need five months of rains too. But the rainy season here only lasts three months, so when we get to the end of the rainy season at the end of October, the plants have not yet reached full maturity," Camera said.
    The farmers are working to change this with a non-governmental organisation called ICRISAT, or the International Crops Research Institute.
    Here in Mali, four farmers from every participating village are helping in the trials, by growing different types of sorghum seed in their fields to see which one works best.
    Nutritional researcher, Aminata Diallo then helps the farmers evaluate their results.

    "We are here for the large-scale evaluation of the trials with all the farmers who participated, to assess the 32 varieties tested. To do this we use three colours: white is for the best strain, yellow is acceptable and red is for no good. After the harvest it's up to the farmer to evaluate each cluster of seeds, and then we go onto the cooking test to see which variety has the best nutritional value. The results of all these tests are then analysed to find the best variety, which will then be given to the farmers' association to make seedlings and to distribute," Diallo said.
    Finding the right seed is a long process that can take up to ten years.
    But even in this place where the fast pace of modern life seems so distant, farmers need to adapt. Hopefully this will help them feed their families through times of changing weather and population growth, which are making it harder and harder to survive.
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