Recovering from Food Insecurity by Orphan Crops

Prof. M Zahidul Haque.

Prof. M Zahidul Haque and Tanzila Rahman

ACCORDING to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)—“Food insecurity is a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active healthy life”.

In order to recover from food insecurity, availability of basic food stuffs must be ensured and this can be accomplished by increasing cultivation of ‘Orphan Crops’ together with major food crops. ‘Orphan crops’ are those crops which are like ‘orphans’ and are less focused and not traded internationally and receive less attention in terms of agricultural research, training and extension. Orphan crops include Cassava, sweet potato, Yam, Cow pea, etc. Crops enlisted under the orphan crops are highly rich in nutritional profile, medicinal and industrial value. They have been silently contributing towards ensuring local food supply and security in many parts of the world including Africa. Orphan crops are indigenous and believed to be cultivated first by the Maya in Yucatan.

Most orphan crops are widely cultivated in the rural areas of Africa. Local people use these as staple food and a source of income. Orphan crops are also cultivated in many countries of Asia including India and Bangladesh and in some parts of Europe and South America.

Most orphan crops are actually tuber crops, e.g. cassava, sweet potato, Aroid, Yam bean, etc. The Government of Bangladesh has attached due importance to the expansion of tuber crops production and popularizing cultivation among the farmers under the Kandol Foshol Unnayan Project (Tuber Crops Development Project) of the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE). A Tuber Crops Research Center of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI) is working on the improvement and development of tuber crops that included some orphan crops too.

The DAE’s Tuber Crops Development Project is working to 20-25% increase of the area under tuber crops cultivation, providing training to the farmers and motivating them to cultivate tuber crops and to consume these as food. One of the writers of this article Tanzila Rahman, UAO, Ramu Upazila together with her extension personnel are regularly imparting training to the local farmers in batches under the Tuber Crops Development Project. The Project has the target to train 6981 batches of farmers (each consists of 20-25 farmers) on tuber crops cultivation.

Among the orphan crops, tuber crops like Cassava, Sweet Potato are of great importance in the context of Bangladesh. However, we are limiting our discussion only to Cassava: Cassava (Manihot esculenta) of Euphorbiaceae family is the largest orphan or tuber crops which are produced in great quantities in Nigeria, Thailand, Brazil and Indonesia. In Bangladesh, Cassava’s cultivation is rapidly increasing due to DAE’s effective extension intervention.

Cassava being an ideal food is enriched in nutritional values. According to USDA database, 100 g of Cassava contains –Carbohydrate 38.1g, Sugars 1.7g, Dietary fiber 1.8g, Fat 0.3g, Protein 1.4g. Cassava is also rich in Vitamins and minerals. It contains 20.6mg Vitamin-C, 21 mg Magnesium, 16mg Calcium, 271mg Potassium, 14mg Sodium, and 0.34mg Zinc.

Cassava flour, starch and alcohol are produced from the cassava tubers. Cassava plant’s leaves and other rejected parts are used as organic fertilizer. Starch produced from Cassava is used in textile, pharmaceutical, garment and food processing industries. It is gathered that every year nearly three lac tons of starch is imported, only six thousand tons produced in the country. So, increase of cassava production can increase starch production thereby save hard earned foreign currency to import starch from abroad. In fact, cassava can easily be turned into a cash crop in Bangladesh.

A variety of food items is prepared from cassava: Cake, Bread, Chips, French Fries, etc. The DAE through its Tuber Crops Development Project is also providing training on how to prepare the above mentioned and other tasty dishes from Cassava.

As cassava is an orphan crop, research on selection and development of high yielding varieties of cassava was earlier neglected but now it’s getting attention.

The BARI has already developed and released some improved varieties with on-field and post-harvest technologies to increasing productivity in cassava cultivation.

By combining traditional plant breeding methods with new biotech tools, such as, ‘genetic marking’ there is a great scope for developing more resilient and higher yielding varieties of most orphan crops including cassava without altering or insertion of genes that takes place with controversial genetic modification.

It may be indicated here that Cassava is resistant to drought and requires less amount of fertilizer for profitable cultivation. However, cassava is vulnerable to bacterial and viral diseases which needs innovating suitable control measure.

It would require a huge amount of food to feed the ever increasing population on our green planet. Land for agriculture is declining fast due to industrialization plus urbanization. Water for drinking and irrigation is getting scarce. The world is now under the threat of Climate Change impacts. The on-going Russia-Ukraine war also emerged as a great risk putting the world economy and food supply to jeopardy!

Orphan crops cultivation can help recover from food insecurity thereby ensure access to food for all.

(Prof. M Zahidul Haque recently retired as Professor and was also a former Dean of Faculty of Agriculture at Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka. 

Tanzila Rahman (BCS-Agri) is Upazila Agriculture Officer, Ramu, Cox’s Bazar)