Fighting Hunger Through Promotion of Traditional Foods among the Youth

By Henry Neondo

Traditional foods from various African cultures and countries are set for display on the Terra Madre Day 2010 this December 10 when 1000 events will simultaneously take place in various places.

In the second edition of the event, more than one hundred countries will bring together local Slow Food networks of farmers, producers, schools, cooks, and members in creative events to celebrate local food, with many events highlighting the basic right to a healthy daily diet, particularly for the world’s poorest people.

Included in the event are small-scale farmers from Kenya who are invited to ensure their local varieties are not lost by coming together to exhibit, sell, share and discuss traditional seeds at the Traditional Seed Fair event.

Also to take part are the girls of the AMPO (Association Managré Nooma pour la Protection des Orphelins) orphanage in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, who will be enjoying a feast of traditional foods in a special event that emphasizes the importance of a local diet for healthier lives and communities.

For its event Dégustation du Fonio a l'Orphelinat Filles de Ampo the orphanage is working with a local organic group to celebrate traditional foods, with tastings of indigenous plants such as moringa (a highly nutritious plant used in the fight against malnutrition) and fonio (considered to be the oldest cereal in West Africa) which are key to a healthy diet in the region.

“This is just a taste of the hundreds of events being held for Terra Madre Day 2010”, said Carlo Petrini, Slow Food International President.

 He said the events are organized to help fight malnutrition from across Africa.

In 2009 the first Terra Madre Day organized by Slow Food saw more than 1,000 events take place across 120 countries in one of the largest collective occasions celebrating food diversity and the right to good, clean and fair food ever achieved on a global scale.

Slow Food convivia and Terra Madre communities brought the voice of small-scale farmers and producers, responsible cooks and concerned consumers to their regions, expressing how our global campaign for better food begins with local sustainable economies that make our lives more pleasurable.

In Kenya, says Petrini, Slow Food’s education projects assist both adults and children to make daily food choices that combine pleasure and responsibility, by creating awareness about where food comes from, how it is produced and by whom.

“We place the education of children as a top priority as they are the most at risk of losing contact with agriculture and regional food traditions, and they can also play a crucial role in persuading their families to eat locally cultivated ‘good, clean and fair’ food”.

The school gardens project in Kenya was launched in 2005 through the efforts of the NGO NECOFA (Network for Ecofarming in Africa), in collaboration with the Slow Food Central Rift Valley convivium and the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity.

It aims to stimulate young Kenyans to have a positive perspective on local agriculture, food traditions and the environment.

Through school gardens, students learn to diversify their diet and cultivate crops using methods that respect the environment.

School canteens are supplied with foods grown by the students, and any surpluses are available for families.

Each garden also functions as a nursery: seedlings of local species are cultivated and sold to the community at affordable prices.

Currently there are 11 schools that have joined the project, with 30 to 50 students involved from each school.

The gardens have a secretary and a treasurer (students), two coordinators (teachers) and two advisors (parents). The students dedicate at least six hours a week to project activities.

“Participation in the school gardens project in no way harms scholastic achievement. On the contrary, our experience since 2005 has shown that of the 10 top students in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE), there are always 4 to 6 who have taken part in many school gardens project.”

 George Ng’ang’a, a  teacher at Michinda school said: “The school garden has supplied the canteen with vegetables, kales and cowpea leaves for an entire term and now we are even selling our products to the community. We never thought that this would be possible!”

Petrini said many actions for Terra Madre Day will incorporate fundraising to adopt a garden or make a contribution, and others are organizing diverse activities to promote the project locally and strengthen the Terra Madre network together with the African communities.

Petrini said the “Thousand Gardens in Africa” project provides education for farmers and young people, encourages the awareness of local plants and biodiversity, respect for the environment and the sustainable use of soil and water.

“It means the passing-on of knowledge from the old to the young and a reinforced spirit of collaboration. A garden, moreover, means guaranteeing a daily supply of fresh and healthy food to local communities, improving the quality of daily life and the development of local economies”. 

The motivation for the garden, says Petrini is the fact that in 1970 there were 80 million malnourished people in Africa. Ten years later this number had doubled and it increased further to reach 250 million in 2009.

In 1960—when decolonization was proceeding—African countries produced enough food to feed themselves and even have a surplus for export. Now they are forced to import most of their food requirements. 

He attributes the unacceptably high level of malnutrition in Africa to be as a result of abandoning traditional agriculture—based on diversity, local varieties and the exchange of seeds between communities—and a transition to agribusiness, which means cultivating monocultures for export (ranging from cotton to crops for biofuels) and resorting to chemicals on a large scale (fertilizers and pesticides which are expensive and impoverish the land). 

“To change direction it is important to preserve biodiversity, focusing on communities and giving them the freedom and responsibility to decide what to grow, eat and sell. It is only possible to do this through many small local initiatives.  A garden is one of them”, he says.

There are currently 17 African countries involved in Terra Madre activities.