14. Wild Grains
Over large areas of Africa people once obtained their basic
subsistence from wild grasses.
In certain places the practice still continues - especially in
drought years. One survey records more than 60 grass species known to be sources
of food grains.
Despite their widespread use and notable value for saving lives
during times of distress, these wild cereals have been largely overlooked by
both food scientists and plant scientists.
They have been written off as "obsolete" - doomed since hunting
and gathering started giving way to agriculture thousands of years ago.
Certainly there has been little or no thought of developing wild grains as
modern foods.
This deserves reconsideration, however. Gathering grains from
grasslands is among the most sustainable organized food production systems in
the world. It was common in the
Stone Age and has been important almost ever since, especially
in Africa's drylands. For millennia people living in and about the Sahara, for
instance, gathered grass seeds on a grand scale. And they continued to do so
until quite recently. Early this century they were still harvesting not
insignificant amounts of their food from native grasslands.
However, in previous centuries the grains of the deserts and
savannas were harvested in enormous quantities. In the Sahel and Sahara, for
example, a single household might collect a thousand kilos during the harvest
season.
The seeds were piled in warehouses by the ton and shipped out of
the region by the caravan-load. It was a major enterprise and a substantial
export from an area that now has no equivalent and is often destitute.
But in modern times these wild grains have been neglected and
even much maligned. Various writers repeatedly refer to them as "famine foods."
This is obviously wrong. Where the grains were gathered, surplus was often the
rule. Wild grains were eaten even when pearl millet was in oversupply, for
instance.
Modern writings also imply that the wild-grass grains were eaten
only in desperation when nothing else was available. This, too, is apparently
false. The harvest was large scale, sophisticated, and commercial: it must have
been founded upon a keen and constant demand. Indeed, all evidence suggests that
the grains were a delicacy that even the wealthier classes considered a luxury.
Remnants of this once vast and highly organized production still
linger. One observer pointed out that harvests of wild grains were still being
carried out in 1968, at least 60 years after they had last been major
contributors to the local diet. However, despite its former prestige and ancient
heritage, the wild-grain harvest has been declining for a century or more.
A major reason for the decline is that the once vast stands of
grasses are much reduced. Partly this results from the demise of the nomads.
Sedentary life encourages continuous and localized grazing so that the plants
never get a chance to form grains. Partly, too, the decline results from the
breakdown of traditional authority. Formerly, chieftains banned grazing animals
from certain areas while the wild grains were filling out. If camels were caught
there during that time, the chieftain could slaughter one of them in recompense;
if goats were caught, he could kill as many as 10.
Just because wild grasses no longer contribute greatly to
Africa's food does not mean they should be disregarded. Even preliminary study
is likely to turn up many fascinating possibilities and perhaps much future
potential. Many come from locations where burning temperatures, scant rains, and
ravenous insects make the better-known grains impossible to produce. Some can
populate and stabilize sand dunes - perhaps even the juggernaut dunes that
threaten to bury oases, farms, villages, roads, and towns. Forged upon the
unforgiving anvil of survival, these wild grasses are clearly suited to the
worst of conditions.
In fact, plants like these - inured to harshness and constantly
pressured by pathogens, pests, severe weather, and harsh soils - are just the
sort of resources the world needs for overcoming some of its most intractable
environmental problems. For example, some of Africa's wild cereals might be
especially good weapons for combating desertification. Indeed, resurrecting the
ancient grain-gathering industry could well be a way to defeat land degradation
across the worst afflicted areas of the Sahel and its neighboring regions. A
vast and vigorous grain-gathering enterprise, for instance, would ensure that
once again the grass cover is kept in place and that overgrazing is controlled
once more.
Such a possibility is not inconceivable. Wild cereals might be
made into an everyday food source, a famine reserve, and perhaps even a
specialty export crop. This last may seem unlikely, but it should at least be
considered. Today, the overall situation is different from that of a century
ago. Railroads and airfreight mean that grains can now be shipped from the
Sahara with much greater ease than on the backs of camels. Moreover, consumers
in affluent nations are increasingly interested in buying and trying "exotic"
cuisines. And many people of goodwill are highly motivated and eager to help
avoid the horrendous tragedies of Sahelian drought and famine they have
witnessed on their television screens in recent decades.
A similar concept is being attempted as a way to combat the
destruction of tropical rainforests. In the last few years, for instance, an
international trade in special tropical-forest products has begun. The object is
to foster an economy based on resources of the rainforest itself. If successful,
it will generate powerful local disincentives for destroying the natural
environment.
In the case of the rainforest, the products are such things as
wild rubber, fruits, nuts, and vegetable-ivory buttons. In the case of Africa's
decertifying areas, the product might be kreb.
Kreb is perhaps the most famous food of the Sahara. A complex of
a dozen or more different wild grains, it was harvested from natural meadows.
Its composition varied from place to place and probably from year to year,
depending on the mix of grasses that grew.
These days, given some clever marketing, "kreb from the Sahara"
might sell at premium prices in Europe, North Africa, and North America, for
example. It would be seen as a gourmet food that provides income to nomads and
protects the earth's most fragile lands from further destruction by keeping a
cover of wild native grasses on them.
Although this idea is highly speculative, subject to many
limitations and uncertainties, it is not beyond reason. Mixed-grain products are
not uncommon in Western supermarkets these days. For instance, in the United
States a popular breakfast cereal is a grain mixture that people boil in water
like rice. (It is made from conventional grains but goes by the trade name
"Kashi," another word for kreb.)
And some expensive breads are made from as many as 11 different
grains. Resurrecting the production of kreb could provide food, income, and
perhaps a protection against famine. It might bring substantial environmental
benefits as well. Many of the wild
African grains come from perennial grasses that continuously
cover the soil and protect it from water and wind erosion. In addition, these
plants facilitate the infiltration of rainfall and prevent rapid runoff from
desert downpours early in the season, a time when annuals are still getting
started and much of the soil around them is exposed and hard. Moreover,
perennial crops have long growing seasons and the extra solar energy they
collect normally produces good grain yields. (This is why some hybrids,
including maize hybrids, have been so productive.)
Native perennials might prove to have economic benefits as well.
Perennials save the vast amount of energy and labor that farmers must put in
each year to move soil for planting and tilling annual cereals. Also, they save
on the often large amount of grains that must be put aside each year for
planting - with a perennial, those can be eaten.
Beyond their direct use as cereals, Africa's wild grasses may
also have international value as genetic resources. Some are related to species
used elsewhere for food or fodder and are likely to have genes of international
importance - particularly because many of them have outstanding tolerance and
resistance to heat, drought, drifting sand, and disease. On the other hand, some
might prove weedy when taken out of the desert and introduced to more salubrious
situations.
The nutritional value of wild-grass seeds has seldom been
studied in detail, but those analyses that have been made indicate that protein
contents are usually considerably higher than that of cultivated cereals.
Several Saharan grains, for instance, have protein contents of 17-21 percent,
roughly twice that of today's main cultivated cereals.
All cereals are low in vitamins A, D, C, B12, and the amino
acids Iysine and tryptophan. Wild grass seeds are no exception. However, some
may be unusually high in food energy. Certain kram-kram seeds' for instance,
apparently have about 9 percent fat and are perhaps higher in energy than any
other cereal grain.
Africa's promising wild cereals include those described below.
All of these deserve the attention of food and agricultural scientists, as well
as of the people involved in battling Sahelian desertification. Even the most
basic studies could be extremely valuable. These include the following:
· Tests to determine how best to plant and establish each
species (seed treatments, sowing depths, planting times, and so on);
·
Direct seeding trials using rain as the sole source of moisture;
·
Searches for elite specimens (those that, for instance, hold onto the ripe seed,
that have bigger seed, and that best survive harsh conditions);
· Trials
on various sites (from the most favorable locations to moving sand
dunes);
· Analyses of food value (physical, chemical, and nutritional)
as well as of the foods prepared from them; and
· Multiplication of
seeds or other planting materials for distribution to nomads, farmers,
governments, and researchers.
Harvesting Wild Grasses
To most people, it probably seems inconceivable that in this age
of intensive agriculture, wild grasses are still being gathered. The following
(adapted from a recent FAO report) gives a sense of the ongoing importance of
wild grains in different parts of Africa.
Niger
On their way from the wet- to the dry-season pastures, the
Tuareg of Niger regularly harvest wild cereals. The grains, collectively known
as ishiban, include desert panic (Panicum laetum) and shame millet (Echinochloa
corona). Women do most of the gathering, and around harvest time groups of five
or six women often go off for a week or so to gather wild grains (as well as
fruits, gum arable, and other wild products).
They collect the grains in different ways:
· If the seed is ripe and ready to fall, they harvest early
in the morning when dew tends to hold the seed in the inflorescence. They swing
a deep, cone-shaped basket through the tops of the plants to gather the
grain.
· If the seed is not ripe enough to fall, they first cut the
grass and then dry, thresh, and winnow the grain as if it were a domesticated
cereal.
· If the seed has already ripened and fallen, they cut or burn
the stands, and later sweep the seeds up off the ground. (This spoils the taste
and adds soil and pebbles, but the harvesters often have no choice.)
·
Sometimes the women search for seeds in ant nests and termite mounds. In
desperate times, such as the terrible drought of the 1970s, they even dig down
to the ants' subterranean storehouses.
Sudan
The Zaghawa of the Sudan and Chad harvest many annual grasses
for food and beer. These include Egyptian grass (Dactyloctenium aegyptium),
desert panic, shame millet, wild tef Eragrostis pilosa), and wild rice (Oryza
breviligulata). Kram-kram (Cenchrus biflorus) and Tribulus terrestris seeds are
used only during famine. The women generally use the grains for their own
families, but they sell some as well. The Zaghawa spend a month or two in the
areas where the wild cereals grow, often returning with three or four camel
loads of grain. The various sites are visited several times, at intervals of
15-30 days. The earliest harvests usually yield the most. There is much communal
cooperation. The women mentally mark off areas for themselves, cut the grass,
and pile it up to dry. To foil any goats or wildlife, they cover their piles
with thorny branches, and to guard against theft, they leave a symbolic stone
representing each woman's clan. Livestock are barred from these areas until
after the grain harvest, and herders are fined if any animals get in. It appears
that the gathering actually helps maintain a good stand of wild cereals, because
less useful plants (especially kram- kram) are taking over the areas where
gathering is no longer practiced.
Zambia
The Tonga of Zambia routinely harvest the grains of wild sorghum
and Egyptian grass, and during famines they also harvest species of Brachiaria,
Panicum, Echinochloa, Rottboellia, and Urochloa. They supplement these wild
cereals with relishes made from leaves, most of which they also usually find in
the wild. These two together provide them with sources of starch, proteins,
fats, vitamins, and minerals. They also use wild native plants for brooms,
building material, fiber, salt, medicine, poisons, and so on.
South Africa
When in the 1930s the Chamber of Mines began asking about edible
wild plants, its labor- recruitment offices across South Africa became
overwhelmed. "We were inundated with parcels from many parts of the country
containing plants or parts of plants," wrote one of the participants recently.
"It became clear that a nutritionally significant part of the people's diet was
being obtained from the veldt"
Among the grains sent in were those from
· Sporobolus fimbriatus (matolo-a-maholo)
·
Brachiaria brizantha (bread grass, long-seed millet)
· Echinochloa
stagnina (bourgou)
· Panicum subalbidum (manna grass)
·
Stenotaphrum dimidiatum (dogtooth grass)
DRINN
The grass known in Arabic as drinn (Aristida punges) once
provided by far the most important wild grain of the northern Sahara. It was
extremely abundant, often growing on sand dunes but especially on bottomlands
watered by runoff from higher ground. It is a tall (to 1.5 m), tufted perennial
with deep roots and long leaves. Its grains are black.
Travelers crossing the Sahara in the past often wrote about
drinn's value, both as a food and as forage. Duveyrier (1864) commented: "its
grain is often the only food for people." Cortier (1908) referred several times
to the abundance of drinn: "The hillocks of sand in all the plain," he wrote,
"are embossed by enormous tufts of drinn, whose black grains at the tips of long
stems swing and sweep the soil."
Even as recently as 1969, drinn was still a significant part of
the diet in the Sahara oases.
In earlier times it was an important food from the desert's edge
almost to the Ahaggar (southern Algeria). It was, for instance, vital to people
living a tenuous existence in the very heart of this fearsome region; the Toubou
of Tibesti (northern Chad) are just one example.
Kram-Kram is now harvested only when other crops fail, but given
some attention it might once again become a universal food for the peoples of
the northern Sahel. Also, this wild plant might be converted to a useful crop.
Domestication could come about quickly, particularly if its
grain were enlarged by selection or cross-breeding with other Cenchrus species.
The plant grows well on sandy soils. It is a reliable source of forage, since it
persists in a dry but palatable state until the next rainy period.
On the other hand, kram-kram is vicious. It is a sandbur whose
grains are enclosed in clusters (fascicles) surrounded with many sharp spines.
These grab onto the fur of animals and the clothing of people. Indeed, they
easily penetrate flesh and have literally been thorns in people's sides for
millennia. Travelers have long complained of the plant's "troublesome nature"
and "constant inconvenience," but they did admit that it was also very useful.
"Many of the Tawarek, from Bornu as far as Timbuktu," wrote Heinrich Barth in
the mid-1800s, "subsist more or less upon its seed."
When mature' the burs fall to the sand in great quantities,
often clinging together in giant masses that roll along with the wind, growing
as they go. People sweep them up with bunches of straw or with giant "combs."
They throw them into a wooden mortar and pound and winnow away the troublesome
spines leaving behind the white, flavorful seeds.
Livestock cannot abide the prickly spikelets, but they like
grazing on kram-kram both in its juvenile state and after the spiky burs have
fallen off. The plant grows vigorously, and during the rainy period it can be
cut several times for hay or silage. The hay must be made at times when the burs
are absent, but silage can be made at any time because the fermentation softens
the bristles, so that animals digest them without difficulty.
Not all forms of this plant are spiky nuisances. At least one
has blunt inner spines and no outer spines at all. It has been called Cenchrus
leptacanthus. If this type breeds true and if it could be developed as a crop,
it would make kram-kram easier to handle and perhaps very valuable as a forage
for many dry areas.
A related species, also used as a wild cereal, is Cenchrus
prieurii. It is spread throughout the Sahara from Senegal to Ethiopia (as well
as India). People eat the crushed grain, mainly as porridge.
KRAM-KRAM
The following, taken from a 1990 report from the United Nations
Sudano-Sahelian Office (UNSO), shows how a farsighted project is restoring one
of the formerly important West African wild grasses. Although it emphasizes
animal feed, it gives a glimpse of what could be done by developing wild grasses
for food.
To farmers and pastoralists in the Inner Delta of Mali, the
bourgou floodplains supply a crucial source of fodder. Without these
bourgoutieres, the livestock would die during the dry season. Only bourgou can
survive in these bottomlands that go underwater each year for months at a time.
Bourgou is unique in its adaptation to these amazing conditions.
As the waters rise around it, the grass grows taller and taller until (after
about 3 months) its stems can reach lengths of more than 3 m. At this point
bourgou is like an aquatic plant with only its flowers and seedheads sticking
above the surface. Once the water level drops, cattle are given access, and as
they walk through the shallows, they trample the seeds and runners into the soft
ground. This ensures that the crop will survive and grow again. However, when
everything has dried out, there remains on the surface a dense mat of grass,
half-a-meter thick.
This mat is what is used for fodder. If well managed, bourgou
produces nearly 30 tons of dry matter per hectare - a sizable yield even for
much more productive locations. When cut and sold in the market, the grass
fetches good prices: between 25 and 100 CFA francs per bundle (1-3 kg) in the
early 1990s.
The problem, however, is that the period of intense drought,
from 1968 to 1985, destroyed many bourgoutieres. So, in 1982 UNSO and the Malian
government began a project to learn how to regenerate bourgou grasslands.
So far, the most effective technique has been to plant
rootlings: small, rooted cuttings collected either from existing bourgoutieres
or from nurseries specifically set up for the purpose. The planting (at an
average rate of 10,000 plants per hectare) is done by hand. This takes a lot of
work, but it has been so successful that this grass has now been re- established
on more than 4,000 hectares. And, as bourgou is a perennial, it should continue
in those floodplains for decades.
Already, regenerated bourgoutieres have had a great impact
locally. Farmers use the grass both for direct grazing and for making silage and
hay. Many have been able to increase their incomes through selling both fodder
and milk. Local milk supplies have increased so much that thousands of families
have benefited from better nutrition.
UNSO feels that areas all along the Niger River could also be
planted with bourgou. It is possible that the grass might even thrive in other
river valleys, such as that of the Senegal, where annual floods make better
known crops difficult to grow.
Of all the grasses of the central delta of the Niger, bourgou
(Echinochloa stagnina) was once the most prevalent. At one time it covered an
estimated 250,000 hectares. (Much of that land, which is flooded for part of
each year, is now under cultivated rice, see Chapter 1.) The Fulani people, for
example, harvested large amounts of bourgou seed for food. They also got sugar
from the plant. Some of the sugar produced by photosynthesis is not converted to
starch and accumulates in the stems. People used it in beverages, both alcoholic
and nonalcoholic. Even today, some sugar is still extracted from bourgou and is
utilized especially for making sweetmeats and a liqueur.
This grass is found typically along river banks and other moist
areas, especially those of Central Africa and on the central delta of the Niger.
Recently, a farsighted UN-sponsored project has begun to restore some of the old
bourgou stands in the area.
Although its seeds are harvested for food, bourgou today is
mainly used for fodder. For this purpose, it is notably important at the
beginning of the dry season. As the annual floodwaters recede, it provides the
vital forage needed to fatten livestock before the dry season sets in and their
drastic weight losses begin.
The genus Echinochloa is one of the larger ones in the grass
family. Two more species used for food in Africa are the following.
Antelope grass (Echinochloa pyramidalis) This native of tropical
Africa, southern Africa, and Madagascar is primarily used for fodder, but is
also used locally as flour.
Shama millet (Echinochloa corona) This plant probably originated
in Asia, but it has been in Africa a very long time. Today people eat its grain
only in dry years, although Egyptians possibly once grew it as a cereal on
farms. The plant thrives in wet, clay soils where few grasses do well (in some
African languages it is called "waters/raw"). Beyond its use as a food, the
plant is suitable for making hay and silage and is relished by livestock.
At least one Daclyloctenium species is eaten in Africa. It is
the socalled Egyptian grass (Dactyloctenium aegyptium). This annual of the
Sahara and the Sudan is now widely naturalized in different parts of the tropics
and subtropics, including North America. It has never been considered as a
possible cultivated crop, but nomads and others in its homeland (as well as
Australian aborigines) gather the grains for food. The plant mostly grows in
heavy soils at damp sites below 1,500 m. Livestock enjoy it, and it is also
suitable for making hay and silage.
This chapter's tables and graphs show that Africa's faminefood
grains can be quite nutritious. They are notably rich in those amino acids that
are essential for human health but that are normally deficient in sorghum and
the other common staples. Kram-kram, Egyptian grass, and wadi rice, for example,
have more of the sulfur-containing amino acids than the FAO reference protein
requirement. Egyptian grass and shame millet proteins are also significantly
higher in threonine than those usually reported for sorghum protein. Wadi-rice
protein (see above) is notably better than sorghum, but it closely resembles
that of common cultivated rice in its amino-acid composition.
Cereals of the West and Central African savannas include two
wild rices. One, Oryza barthii, is the wild progenitor of the African
domesticated rice (see African rice chapter and especially the map). An annual,
it tends to grow in shallow depressions that fill with water during the rains
but later dry up. It produces abundant seed and is still harvested on a
considerable scale.
The second species, Oryza longistaminata, is perennial and thus
requires a more continuous supply of moisture. It is a relatively shy seeder,
but its grain is sometimes harvested in sufficient quantities to reach the local
markets.
A third wild rice (Oryza punctata) is indigenous to eastern
Africa. This so-called "wadi rice" is a freely tillering annual that grows up to
1.5 m tall, and it, too, commonly occurs in rain-flooded depressions. Its seeds
are relatively large and resemble those of cultivated rice except that they have
a reddish husk. In Central Sudan, where wadi rice is widespread, the grains are
boiled with water or milk and eaten as a staple.
Among other wild African grasses that are, at least on a few
occasions, used as food are the following. Little or nothing is known about
these or their food uses, but certain botanical tomes contain the following
cryptic comments.
Urochloa mosambicensis. Central and East Africa. Grains boiled.
Urochloa trichopus. Tropical Africa. Grains sometimes eaten.
Themeda triandra. Tropical and southern Africa. Perennial grass.
Grain eaten during times of famine. Forms principal cover in fireclimax savanna
areas. Used as fodder for livestock. Possibly of use in papermaking. Used a lot
for thatching; bundles are sold in Ethiopian markets for the purpose.
Latipes senegalensis. Tropical Africa. Annual grass. Seeds are
eaten by desert tribes.
Eragrostis ciliaris. Widespread in tropics. Grains used as
famine food.
Eragrostis gangetica. Tropical Africa and Asia. Grains used as
famine food.
Eragrostis pilosa. Grains harvested regularly in East Africa.
Eragrostis tremula. Tropical Africa and South Asia. Grains used
as famine food.
Setaria sphacelata. Eastern South Africa, South Cape, Botswana,
Namibia. Perennial, robust, usually tufted grass. Of much economic importance.
Different varieties or ecotypes have various uses: for hay and silage; for
silage only; or just for grazing. Seeds eaten as famine
food.
