Since she was a child, Lanez Bitoni has been collecting fruit from the giant baobab trees that surround her farm in Zimbabwe to add variety to her family’s staple food of maize and millet. Until now, Mr. Bitoni, 50, had not thought of them as a source of cash.
Droughts caused by climate change are decimating her crops. Meanwhile, around the world, demand for baobab fruit, which is resistant to drought, is increasing as a natural health food.
Bitoni wakes up before dawn to forage for baobab fruit, sometimes walking barefoot through hot, thorny landscapes where she is at risk of being attacked by wild animals. She collects bags of hard-shelled fruit from ancient trees and sells them to industrial food processors and private buyers in the city.
The baobab trade, which took hold in her region in 2018, previously supplemented children’s school fees and clothing for locals in Kotuwa, a small town in northeastern Zimbabwe. Survival is now a question in the wake of the recent devastating drought in southern Africa, made worse by the El Niño phenomenon.
“All we can buy is corn and salt,” Bitoni said after a long day of harvesting. “Cooking oil is a luxury because we don’t have enough money. Sometimes we go a month without buying a bar of soap. We can’t even talk about school fees or children’s clothes.”
The global market for baobab products is soaring, with many sources coming from rural Africa, where baobab trees are abundant. The tree is known to survive under harsh conditions such as drought and fire, but it takes more than 20 years before it begins to bear fruit, and it is foraged rather than cultivated.
Tens of thousands of rural people like Bitoni showed up to meet the need. The African Baobab Alliance, which represents all baobab-producing countries on the continent, plans to help more than one million rural African women reap the economic benefits of baobab fruit, which stays fresh for a long time thanks to its thick shell. I am doing it.
Members of the alliance train local residents on food safety. It also encourages people to pick the fruit, which can be up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) wide and 21 inches (53 centimeters) long, from the ground, rather than the dangerous task of climbing giant, thick-trunk trees. . But many people, especially men, still do it.
Native to the African continent, the baobab is known as the “tree of life” for its resilience and can be found from South Africa to Kenya, Sudan and Senegal. There are about 5 million trees in Zimbabwe, according to government export agent Zimtrade.
However, the health benefits of baobab have long gone unnoticed in other regions.
Industry pioneer Gus Le Breton remembers the early days.
“Baobabs did not develop into the world-traded and known superfood by chance,” Le Breton said, adding that years of regulation to persuade authorities in the European Union and the United States to approve baobabs, I remembered the safety and toxicity tests.
“This is ridiculous, since baobab fruit has been safely consumed in Africa for thousands of years,” said Le Breton, an ethnobotanist who specializes in African plants used for food and medicinal purposes. Ta.
Research has shown that baobab fruit has several health benefits, both as an antioxidant and as a source of essential minerals such as vitamin C, zinc, potassium, and magnesium.
The United States legalized the import of baobab powder as a food and beverage ingredient in 2009, one year after the EU. However, it took repeated trips to Western and Asian countries to get foreign palates to accept its sharp acidity.
“No one had ever heard of the name, no one knew how to pronounce it. It took a long time,” Le Breton said. This tree is pronounced “BAY-uh-bab.”
Currently, the United States and Europe, along with China, account for the largest markets for baobab powder. The Dutch government’s Import Promotion Center says the global market could reach $10 billion by 2027. Le Breton said the association predicts a 200% increase in global demand from 2025 to 2030, and is also looking at increasing consumption by people in Africa as people become healthier. A conscious city person.
Companies such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi have launched product lines promoting baobab ingredients. In Europe, the powder is touted by some as having “real star quality” and is used to flavor beverages, cereals, yogurts, snack bars and more.
In Germany, a 1-kilogram (2.2-pound) pack of baobab powder sells for about 27 euros (about $30). In the UK, a 100 milliliter (3.38 ounce) bottle of Baobab Beauty Oil sells for 25 pounds (approximately $33).
A processing factory in Zimbabwe showcases a growing industry where baobab pulp is bagged separately from the seeds. Each bag has a tag that tracks the harvester who sold it. The hard shells are converted into biochar outside the factory and the ash is given free of charge to farmers to make organic compost.
Pickers like Bitoni say they only dream of turning their fruit into a commercial product. She earns 17 cents for every kilogram of fruit and can spend up to eight hours a day walking across the sun-drenched savannah. She ran out of nearby trees.
“Fruit is in demand, but the trees didn’t bear much fruit this year, so sometimes we come home without filling a single bag,” Bitoni said. “It takes five bags to get enough money to buy a 10 kilogram (22 pound) pack of cornmeal.”
Some private buyers feeding Zimbabwe’s growing powder market in urban areas are preying on residents’ drought-induced hunger, selling corn in exchange for seven 20-liter buckets of cracked fruit. Some are offering meals, she said.
“People have no choice because they have nothing,” said Kingston Shero, a local councilor. “Buyers are forcing prices on us, but because of hunger we have no ability to resist.”
Le Breton expects prices to rise as the market expands.
“I think the market has grown significantly, but I don’t think it’s grown exponentially. It’s been pretty steady growth,” he said. “I believe that at some point it will increase in value, and at that point the harvesters will be able to earn a serious income from harvesting and selling this truly wonderful fruit.”
Government export agency Zimtrade lamented the low prices paid to baobab pickers and said it was considering partnering with rural women to set up processing factories.
Prosper Chitambara, a development economist based in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare, said difficulties were likely to continue due to the lack of bargaining power of fruit pickers, some of whom are children. .
On a recent day, Bitoni wandered from one baobab tree to the next. She carefully inspected each fruit before leaving the small pieces for wild animals such as baboons and elephants to eat. This is a long-standing tradition.
“It’s a lot of work, but buyers don’t even understand when you ask for a price increase,” she says.
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