Have a Cassava Today

From its humble origin in Brazil, the cassava is set to impact the world's food supply in a big way. Cassava, also known as yuca and tapioca, is a root grown through stem cutting. Amongst the staple starch crops in the world, it has one of the highest soluble carbohydrates count. In other words, its calorie per cultivated area unit is the highest, thus economically it's one of the cheapest source of starch for human consumption.


With little population growth mitigation*, largely unsustainable food practices, and economic impediments, food shortage is a daily problem for the billions of people in both developing and developed countries of the world.


Production and consumption are the highest in Africa, especially Nigeria, the most populous African nation and biggest consumer of cassava.  On a continent where around 28% of all children are estimated to be underweight or stunted, where UNICEF conservatively reports 24,000 children die every day due to poverty, it's a moral imperative that we all tackle this problem. If these numbers aren't shocking enough, here is another one- in the US, one out of eight children under the age of twelve goes to bed hungry every night.

And here is how cassava comes into play. Naturally, cassava has several notable cons: it's deficient in nutrients the human body needs, decays rapidly once harvested, and has high cyanogen toxicity which must be processed out before consumption. But, it has enviable pros: it's simply hardy, surviving in extremely low-grade terrains, border friendly since it's vegetatively propagated, and has an unusually long harvest period- as long as three years- enabling piecemeal harvest.

Working from its pros, biofortifying the cassava with attractive  farmer and consumer drivers will improve its profile as a human food crop, extremely important in deterring farmers from switching to cash crops and stemming off consumer resistance to genetically tinkered food.

The urgency of these efforts on cassava is to secure it as one of the dependable food crop in a world of swelling population, global warming, ecological deterioration, and economic uncertainty.

Global cassava production in recent years has withered due to several economic and environmental reasons. For the former, farmers are switching to cultivar grades and varieties for use as animal feeds, biofuel, pharmaceutical drugs, and other non-food use. For the latter, several reputed institutes and independent researches, such as Monash and BioCassava Plus Program, have reported links between climate change to increased toxic levels in plants and decreased global yields. As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases choke the world- exasperating acid rain, higher soil acidity, and droughts- crop quality and yield take a heavy toil and no one is the better for it.


Thankfully there are mechanisms already in play rooting out this problem. Look at it like a 3-stool model: agricultural Darwinism by selective plant breeding, agricultural practices for efficiency and sustainability, and biotechnology to alter and manipulate the plants at the gene level.


The last leg of this stool is the most intriguing for its gusto and potential. Inroads have already been made as far as the field trial stage. In fact, one particular program, mentioned above- BioCassava Plus Program-  funded generously by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, believes it can roll out its full-packaged biofortified cassava by 2018 to the 240 million sub-Saharan African mouths dependent on this tuber for their main source of calorie. The mission is to arm the cassava with genes to withstand droughts, salient deficient soils, short post-harvest shelf life, viruses and insects, as well as, to fortify it with nutrients like vitamin E, betacarotene, zinc, iron, and protein.


This is good for everyone, from an economic and humanitarian standpoint. Food security efforts benefit everyone from Canada to the garden states of the US, for manufacture-heavy China, and of course, for many parts of Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and India where people still die from one of the bare essentials of life- food.


This is one of my little personal crusade to increase the profile of the cassava. It can be substituted for texture, consistency, and taste for potatoes and other tuber-based dishes. Try some cassava today!


*China's One-Child Policy has been one of the more well-known efforts at constraining its population and though it has statistically restrained, its ethnic Han population, too many tragic side effects resulted from this government policy. As of November 2013, the policy has been eased to allow two children in cases where one parent is an only child.

Cassava and Sweet Banana Dessert Soup - Chè Khoai Mì Chuối Xiêm 

Makes 2 1/2 quarts, about 7-8 servings

Ingredients

• 1 medium cassava root, khoai mì, about one pound - peeled and diced into roughly 2 inch bites
• 6 fresh sweet banana, chuối xiêm or 1 can sweet banana- rinsed, strained, and cut into bite sized pieces
• 3/4 can coconut milk
• 2 pandan leaves, found in the frozen section of a Southeast Asian friendly market- knotted for compactness
• 7 oz (200 g) rock sugar or brown sugar
• 1/2 cup tapioca pearls (more cassava!)- soaked in room temperature water, strained and gently rinsed 

Directions

1. Boil 4 cups or 1 quart of filtered water.

2. When it has boiled, add the cassava pieces, pandan leaves, and sugar. Turn the heat to medium.

3. Cook till the cassava is soft but still firm, then turn the heat to low.

4. Add the coconut milk and tapioca pearls and continue cooking until the pearls are midway transparent.

5. Add the sweet banana and cook till the tapioca pearls are completely transparent. 

6. Adjust sweetness to taste.

7. Turn off the heat and serve.

May also like: CASSAVA CAKE

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