A Staple Crop

All around us here in Lancaster County the corn is really starting to grow and it is a continual reminder of how important corn is as a staple crop here.

In Southern Ethiopia it is a much different crop that is considered a staple. The crop is Enset, otherwise known as "False Banana." I first heard of Enset when a friend of ours was showing us pictures from a recent trip to Ethiopia and there were a number of pictures of False Banana. I thought to myself, what a funny name.

It turns out that Enset has absolutely nothing to do with bananas, other than that it resembles domesticated banana plants in its look. The fruit of Enset is not edible, instead it is the root that becomes food. An Enset plant's root can provide up to 40kg of food, thus being a huge staple for many family's diets.

Enset has become a very important crop in southern Ethiopia. While it does grow other places in Africa and Asia, nowhere else is it counted on as a vital crop as it is here. The reason why it is so important to Ethiopia is its ability to resist drought. Enset becomes a crop that can be counted on even if other crops fail. It also has a high yield even though it takes years to mature.

Growing Enset is labor intensive. It takes at least 6 - 9 years for an Enset plant to grow to maturity. This means that plantings must be staggered to insure that Enset is always available. The process for planting, cultivating and harvesting Enset is also intensive, and each family member has a certain part of the process which they oversee in the growing and the harvesting of the root as well as the grinding and preparation of the root to make food.

When it is harvested the root is cut into cubes and is walked through a process of fermentation, pressing and drying. After a number of steps and weeks of fermentation and drying a cake is formed. A family will cut off of this cake what is needed and then grind it into a flour to be used for making bread, injera or porridge.

As might be expected Enset is very starchy and has very little protein. While it is a stable crop and provides security, it does not have the nutritional value of other crops. Compare it to wheat for instance. 100gms of wheat has 344 calories and 11.5%protein. 100 gms of Enset provides only 190 calories and 1.5% protein. While it is lacking in nutrition there still are 7 to 10 million Ethiopians which depend on food made from Enset. The problem lies in the periods when people become dependent on Enset to fill the gap because there are not other crops available to them. During these times there has been found a need for outside help to provide supplemental nutrition for folks.

source material: upenn, un-eue, wikipedia.