Copyright Eden Foundation
Throughout Niger, following a poor rainy season in 2009 that left many families with insufficient millet harvests, people have been living off hanza beans this year.

Copyright Eden Foundation
Why anybody wants to call this protein-rich beanlike seed “famine food” is beyond me, because once you’ve rinsed away the bitterness, the [...]

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Copyright Eden Foundation
Meet Alhadji Bukar, an Eden farmer in the Tanout area.

Copyright Eden Foundation
14 years ago, Alhadji Bukar joined the Eden program and started to sow edible trees and bushes in his field. Today, these trees and bushes are well established and produce food, even during years where there is little rain. The Eden trees [...]

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Famine food or luxury food?
Hanza beans & wild Swedish mushrooms, both straight from Nature’s Pantry!
On July 16th, Sean Callahan, a top Catholic Relief Services (CRS) official, appeared before US congress to recommend “urgent response” to the people affected by the global food crisis:
In some regions of Niger, families have started eating only one meal a [...]

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Past Tuesday, after coming home from a full day at the field station, my sister suggested we treat ourselves with some good food and a cosy evening in front of the TV. I asked her want she had in mind (foodwise), and she said: “Oh, can’t you make one of those nice pasta dishes that [...]

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Copyright Eden Foundation
I hear aid workers in town talking about the need for emergency food operations in Niger again, and on UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund site, I read the following about Niger’s current state:

Almost 30% of the population is in need of emergency food aid
CERF 2008

And there we go again… It’s a never ending [...]

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When I had my Jamaican neighbor over for a ‘famine food’ recipe last week, she thought the Boscia senegalensis was really good, and that it tasted a bit like peas. It was her idea to serve it like a vegetable, so today I had her over for a fabulous-looking new dish, namely the Hanza sallad! [...]

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Copyright Eden Foundation
The Eden farmers and their families mix the cooked Maerua crassifolia leaves with crushed peanuts, decorate with an onion and sell it in the village. There is a lot of money to be made this way, because the meal is good!
And so when making one of the two casseroles I was going to [...]

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From a world market perspective - where the global spotlight stays focused on a handful of species that still produce the majority of the food despite the fact that there is a total of 78,000 edible species available in the world (an untapped resource for the upcoming ‘world food crisis’) - it would not be [...]

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