Feeding Senegal’s “hidden hunger”

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research 1:56 Feeding Senegal’s “hidden hunger”

By:

Ray Meese

27 Aug 2024 368

For more than a decade, Virginia Tech agronomist Ozzie Abaye has helped spread mung bean production in a country that faces drought, extreme temperatures, food security challenges, and a rural population with a “hidden hunger” that is deficient in iron, protein, and crucial vitamins and minerals.

I've been working in various countries in Africa, but mainly in Senegal. I start really looking at or examining their cropping system, production system, and I realized that they don't really have that many food crops. They do have KP, like Black eye KP, but an agricultural system that dependence on a single crop is not very good. It's not sustainable, it's not resilience. So I thought, Okay, so if they are growing KPI, I wonder if we should really explore in adding other legum food legum that's close to copy. So that's how I got into exploring about monk in, which is very closely related to copy. Okay, so if we produce it, would they eat it? That did not really enter my mind because I was pre driven by the production part. Fortunately, for us, they loved it. They call me Madame Mongobn. The children at school, they they chant when I come in, Madame Mongobn, you know? And it's hard not to really pull your heart out when people are actually that happy to see you.

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