How Ethiopia’s indigenous plant secures the future
What if food and feed could grow continuously, be harvested at any time of year, and provide both protein and energy from a single plant?
What if food and feed could grow continuously, be harvested at any time of year, and provide both protein and energy from a single plant?
While climate change threatens across the country, Southern Ethiopian farmers have cultivated a solution: A drought-tolerant plant that stores both food and feed in its tissues year-round. The plant, enset, Ensete ventricosum, is referred to as the ‘false banana’, a nutrient bank, a cornerstone of climate-resilient farming for over 20 million people. When dry seasons limit the availability of other animal feed resources, enset continues to provide reliable and an ever-growing source of nutrition.
A bank with two accounts
The enset plant's brilliance lies in its dual nutrient system, which farmers view as a bank with two separate accounts they can access.
- The protein account: The leaves are a reliable source of protein, crucial for productive livestock. Even in drought, the leaves retain their nutritional value, providing a protein supplement when other green fodder is no longer available..
- The energy account: The massive underground corm and pseudostem are vaults of energy-rich starch and water. With a moisture content that exceeds 90%, these parts of the plant offer a critical source of hydration during dry spells.
By strategically combining withdrawals from both accounts and hydration, farmers can create balanced, nutritious rations that keep their animals productive year-round.
Balancing food and feed accounts
Farmers maintain diversified landrace collections for either human consumption or livestock feed, spreading risk while maximizing utility across production goals. Strategic harvesting practices allow selective withdrawals of outer leaves for animal feed while preserving the core plant for food. Spatial allocation places feed-oriented varieties in marginal, less fertile areas to optimize overall farm productivity, while temporal optimization calibrates harvest timing to balance immediate needs against long-term reserves, allowing the enset bank to grow during prosperous years and increasing withdrawals during crises.
"I plant enset landraces for livestock fattening along the perimeter fence, food landraces in the main garden. The feed varieties don't need the best soil; they grow well on the margins. But for kocho production, I keep the more fertile land."
Unlocking enset's potential for the sheep fattening economy
Enset is more than a subsistence crop; it is a direct pathway to income generation. The plant’s readily available energy makes it an ideal, low-cost feed for fattening sheep in Doyogena district. This allows youths and women engaged in sheep fattening to prepare their animals for market, timing their sales with festivals and holidays when prices are at their peak. It’s a direct conversion of stored plant nutrients into cash for agricultural inputs, healthcare, school materials, and household investments.
Furthermore, enset offers a significant, yet largely untapped, income stream from its fiber. Currently, the strong fibers are either discarded or used for local ropemaking, but they have immense commercial potential across various industries.
In Doyogena district, the local fiber collection and distribution center serves as a central hub for fiber marketing. Farmers bring fresh enset fiber to the market, selling it at $1 per kilogram. The center then distributes it nationwide. This plays a key role in the construction sector, where it is mixed with gypsum to create durable building materials.
Securing the bank for the future
Despite its strengths, this living bank is not without its vulnerability. The most significant threat is enset bacterial wilt, a devastating disease with no known chemical cure. It’s a constant battle that highlights the need for more research.
Despite its immense potential, the full benefits of enset are constrained by traditional, labor-intensive processing methods. The demonstration of small-scale mechanization for enset processing is a critical step forward for efficient utilization for food, and income.
As climate change continues to bring uncertainty, the enset system offers powerful lessons in resilience. Its ability to provide food, feed, and income under environmental stress makes it a crop of global significance. The challenge now is to blend the traditional knowledge of Ethiopian farmers with modern science to protect and enhance this incredible living bank for generations to come.
This article draws on insights from fieldwork conducted in Ethiopia as part of my PhD study at Wageningen University in collaboration with the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), and Global Research On Worldwide Challenges (GROW), which is co-funded by the EU through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions COFUND programme.
Read more
- Enset in Ethiopia: a poorly characterized but resilient starch staple
- Population, biomass, and economic value of small ruminants in Ethiopia
- Contribution of Enset-based farming system in livelihoods and food security in central Ethiopia