Food security

When Virginia Tech's "mung bean lady" arrives in the village of Thiewle in northern Senegal, people gather to sing and dance under the shade of a giant baobab tree. 

Farmers clamor to tell her about their flourishing "mungo bean" crop that is feeding the village's children. Smiling women in colorful head scarves confide that the children have more energy, thanks to mung bean dishes prepared with local ingredients.

The reception is the same in dozens of communities across Senegal where the mung bean lady — better known as Ozzie Abaye — has become a familiar and nurturing presence. 

Over the past 13 years, she has helped spread sustainable, healthy mung bean production in a country facing serious food security challenges, including drought, extreme temperatures, nutrient-deficient soils, poor crop diversity, and a rural population with a "hidden hunger" that is deficient in iron, protein, and crucial vitamins and minerals. Nearly two-thirds of Senegalese children under age 5 and more than half of women of childbearing age are anemic and suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.

Abaye aims to change that, leveraging more than 30 years as an agronomist and partnerships with the nonprofit Counterpart International, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and U.S. Agency for International Development.

"Having food security is a human right," said Abaye, a professor of agronomy at Virginia Tech's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. "Anytime you are promoting food security, you are promoting the right of the people to have food, purchasing power, and economic empowerment. There’s nothing that food does not fix."

In the past five years in partnership with Counterpart International, Abaye has introduced the mung bean as an indispensable crop in more than 40 Senegalese communities to provide consistent school meals for over 10,000 children.

The effort is far from complete, as she expands into new regions and involves additional partners and neighboring countries.

More than 4,300 miles away from Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus, Abaye is spreading the university's global land-grant mission to help food insecure communities thrive using sustainable agriculture.

It all started with a tiny green legume.

Abaye first came to Senegal in 2011 as part of a U.S. Agency for International Development Education and Research in Agriculture grant to Virginia Tech intended to help strengthen the country's agricultural sector and economy.

Noting that the country was heavily dependent on grain, Abaye and her graduate students wanted to help farmers diversify their cropping systems to introduce more nutrient-dense foods.

The cowpea – or black-eyed-pea – had a longstanding history as a favorite food legume in the country. So Abaye looked to its cousin, the mung bean, which offered similar benefits as a nutritious, fast-growing, heat-tolerant legume.

Tests with farmers showed it grew quickly, increased their millet production, and was well-received.

When the project ended in 2018, Abaye published her research on the mung bean's success and returned to teach at Virginia Tech.

Then Counterpart International called. The nonprofit organization was working with the Senegalese government to improve the country's low education rate through school feeding and nutrition programs. They had a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) funded through the McGovern-Dole Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. Would Abaye come back to help more farmers grow mung bean to donate to schools?

"I was jumping up and down," Abaye said.

She had met the perfect partner.

Under the penetrating sun of northern Senegal in 2019, Abaye dropped a small, green orb into Amadou Saydou Sow's outstretched hand.

She explained that mung bean had a fast growth cycle, low production cost, hardiness for Senegal's hot and dry climate, soil-enriching properties, and the extra protein and vitamins that children and nursing mothers needed.

Sow, a farmer in the northern village of Thiewle, had never seen a mung bean before but took little convincing to make room for it in his cropping systems.

"It is not often that someone from far away brings seed to the community," he said. "Thus, we did not hesitate to mobilize our resources to try it out."

Sow harvested his first crop of mung bean within 60 days. It was enough to feed all the children at Thiewle's school with plenty left over to sell to other villages.

"They went crazy over it," Abaye said. "They loved it."

For smallholder rural farmers like Sow, who collectively produce as much as 80 percent of West Africa's food supply and face significant pressure from climate shocks, mung bean was a thrilling success.

Five years later, it is a permanent part of Theiwle's cropping systems and diets. Residents say they have more energy when they eat mung bean. Children fed mung bean at school no longer come home hungry. Nursing women report they are producing more milk.

"Communities from far away have been asking me for mung bean seed, and I feel obligated to share some," said Sow, who was one of the first farmers in the country to adopt mung bean. "Feeding the children is feeding the community. Long after Virginia Tech and Counterpart International are gone, we will continue this project."

Counterpart International asks every farmer group or community to donate 25 percent of the mung bean harvest to the school canteen. They call the effort Sukaabe Jango, which means "the children of tomorrow" in Pulaar, one of Senegal’s main languages.

The goal is to use food to improve school attendance and learning in Senegal's rural communities, where 4 in 10 children do not complete primary school and only 37 percent complete a full cycle of basic education.

"School meals combat hunger, poverty, malnutrition, keep kids in school, and promote gender equity," said Theresa Becchi, associate director of resilient food systems programming for Counterpart International. "Almost 50 percent of Senegal's young population is reached through the school system, so improving their nutritional status will go a long way toward improving food security. An early intervention like providing meals supports the long-term success of any society."

In community centers, schools, and under the canopies of trees, Abaye meets with villagers. Men, women, and children eagerly convene to learn about the high-protein bean that could improve their fortunes.

Over the course of years, Abaye guides each village through the process of mung bean production – from preparing the soil to planting, growing, and harvesting – and then through ways to cook it, using local, in-season fruits and vegetables. For those who are unable to read, Abaye shares animated videos that demonstrate how to prepare mung bean recipes with familiar objects and foods.

"Ozzie is an amazing partner," said Kathryn Lane, the chief of party for Counterpart International’s USDA-funded Senegal program. "She is the key to building positive working relationships with community members, and she is most respected and adored by the mainly female farmers she works with. She is a positive force in helping to improve people’s lives and an excellent female role model in a place where rural women often have to fight to be heard."

Abaye's efforts are highly targeted to empower women – who make up 70 percent of the agricultural workforce and produce 80 percent of Senegal’s crops, yet also face more challenges than men, including low access to education, land, and credit.

In the village of Kanel, a team of women farmers is now producing enough mung bean from a 1,500-square-foot garden to feed the kindergarten and elementary school, along with several families.

"During the harvest, I shared the product with the whole village, and that was a great source of pride for me," said Mame Bineta Kane, the leader of the Kanel women's group. "I am often called 'Bintou mungo bean' [an honorific term for a woman] and I am very proud to bear this name."

Marie Sané, director of the elementary school in Sédhiou, reports that her students have improved their academic performance.

"Thanks to the school canteen, latecomers, absences, and drop-outs have become old memories," she said.

Abaye and Counterpart International are currently taking mung bean production to 29 more villages in southern Senegal, where the climate is wetter but still hospitable.

"What a great way to serve children and communities – by feeding the children," Abaye said. "When you talk about school feeding programs, communities get excited because that’s their children you’re taking care of. In every village we go to, the people are so happy."

Abaye enlists partners wherever she goes. She has engaged agronomists from the Université Gaston Berger in nearby St. Louis, Senegal, to help educate farmers on soil health, fertilizer, and composting and to develop new lines of mung bean optimized for Senegal's climate and health needs.

"They are a welcome and friendly society," Abaye said. "It helps to build trust before you open your mouth. I don't go in thinking I can fix all the problems. I go there to listen, help, and work with them to utilize the resources they have to improve their livelihood. The implementation is really driven by the community."

Though Abaye has many communities where she is welcomed, she only claims one as home: Blacksburg. The campus of Virginia Tech is where she finds colleagues willing to partner on projects and ideas that she brings back to Africa.

"The university is like my toolbox," she said. "I have all the support in the world. If I cannot do something, I can call on somebody. There are tremendous resources and a generous spirit."

True to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech has produced dozens of willing collaborators from the ranks of its faculty, staff, and students.

When Senegalese communities needed a more efficient tool to remove the hard hulls from mung beans for eating, students in the College of Engineering designed a mung bean splitter. College of Agriculture and Life Sciences conservation agronomist Lydia Fitzgerald joined Abaye to lead workshops for farmers on how to improve soil health and crop yield. And Erica Bonnet, Virginia Cooperative Extension 4-H education specialist, worked with Senegalese teachers and students to develop hands-on science and agriculture lessons around the mung bean.

Above all else, Abaye is a teacher. At Virginia Tech, she is known as "Dr. Ozzie" — an inspiring mentor who regularly invites current and former students to her home to share a meal.

In classes such as Agriculture, Global Food Security and Health and World Crops and Cropping Systems, she incorporates both hands-on and service-learning experiences to show students the practice of agriculture and the implications of food insecurity.

"My work in food security has been teaching," she said. "Teaching is not what I do for a living, but what I do to live. When I stand in front of the students, I feel overwhelming joy and gratitude to be entrusted as part of the young men's and women's futures."

One of her favorite ways to teach is through study abroad experiences. Since 2013, she has accompanied students with other faculty members on 17 trips to five continents, where they experience local agriculture and undertake service projects such as creating community gardens, greenhouses, and educational programs.

Many of her students have seized the mantle of fighting food insecurity. Former students Mary Michael Lipford Zahed and Megan Pollok traveled to Ghana immediately after college to teach agriculture in impoverished rural communities, both on fellowships from the Norman Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture.

"I can confidently say Dr. Ozzie has shaped my career more than any other person in my life," Lipford said. "She views students as potential world changers and invests all she has to give."

"Traveling with and learning from Dr. Ozzie opened my eyes to the lasting impact that I could have on global food security," Pollok said. "I saw through my experiences at Virginia Tech that agriculture is the key to improving economic stability and livelihoods. You can't begin to get ahead in education or move forward into production workforces and careers if you don’t have a sustainable source of nutritious food."

Senegal native Andre Diatta came to Virginia Tech in 2016 as a graduate student in agriculture. Though he didn't grow up in an agricultural family, when he looked around his country where food security was a major problem, he knew he wanted to be part of the solution — which led him to Virginia Tech.

"Dr. Ozzie influenced me so much," he said. "She has dedicated her time and energy to delivering sustainable solutions for small holder farmers in Senegal. Working with her developed in me a deep interest in pursuing a career in research and teaching agronomy and international agriculture."

Today, he is an associate professor of agronomy at Senegal’s Université Gaston Berger, which has partnered with Abaye on the mung bean project. Diatta spent the past several years studying the productivity and sustainability of mung bean across Senegalese regions with varied farming practices and environmental conditions.

"We have demonstrated that mung bean can play a central role in enhancing the resilience of agricultural production systems in Senegal," he said. "It's a privilege to have the opportunity to work on sustainable solutions to improve the productivity and sustainability of Senegalese agriculture."

During her 13-year journey to bring the mung bean to Senegal, Abaye fell in love with the country and its people. She established connections that will endure long after the project ends.

In the village of Santamba, which she calls a second home, Abaye established the Samuel and Eleanor Morris 4-H Center — named after her late parents — as a place for the community to unite and learn together. A few years later, she built a commercial kitchen where more than 20 women prepare the school meals together.

When she discovered that boys and girls at the Thiewle elementary school had to share a bathroom — which meant girls had to miss classes when they had their period — Abaye funded the construction of a separate bathroom. She hopes to provide similar amenities for other villages who have welcomed her with open arms.

"I am there to share their goals and values," she said. "Even when this project is over, I'll find a way to keep coming back."

But there is an even more fundamental way Abaye will remain rooted in the land.

Currently, mung bean seeds are not produced in Senegal. They are shipped in from the United States, which has several varieties of mung bean compatible with the country's climate and needs.

Soon Senegal will have its own mung bean. Diatta is one of the Senegalese researchers testing new varieties of mung bean that are optimized to grow faster and impart more nutrients than previous versions from the U.S.

Two varieties will soon be available to farmers across Senegal. One is named Hutcheson after the namesake of the central building in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences — Hutcheson Hall.

The other needs no explanation.

It’s named "the Ozzie."