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Pages 221-234

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From page 221...
... In at least a dozen countries, at times people virtually live off aizen fruits, aizen seeds, aizen roots, and aizen leaves. In eastern Sudan, for example, men and women sometimes spend 8 hours a day seeking aizens, carrying the branches and fruits home to ease their hunger or sell along the roadsides to other hungry people.
From page 222...
... Yet it not only survives, it yields enough useful products to sustain human life almost by itself. In at least a dozen countries, people virtually live off aizen fruits, seeds, roots, and leaves.
From page 223...
... This is in the rainy season but it is a critical period when food stocks from the previous harvest are at their lowest." 6 Sometimes the juice is extracted by loading a pile of aizen fruits into the panniers carried by donkeys. The jolting does the job.
From page 224...
... . As to minerals, the seed has exceptional amounts of sulfur and zinc.8 Roots Young roots, scraped of bark, may be ground, sieved, mixed with cereals, and boiled into a thin gruel or thick porridge.
From page 225...
... A food security gem, this fruit has been a proven lifesaver during famines from ancient times right up to recent days. Within recent memory it has preserved many lives in the Sahel as well as during the subsequent famines in Sudan and Ethiopia.
From page 226...
... Some practical steps and basic fact-finding endeavors are the following. Build Up Wild Stands One direct approach toward improving food security for Africa's most vulnerable regions is to rescue, revive, and redevelop the individual trees and existing stands of aizen.
From page 227...
... Again, locals should see a lot of selfinterest in the work, and will likely participate with enthusiasm, not to mention skill and care. According to a Sudanese famine-food specialist, aizen was the "number one" famine food during the horrific 1984 famine in the western Sudan.
From page 228...
... toxic compounds are present. Helpful here, also, would be public health surveys of possible harmful effects on the people who eat aizen fruits in quantity.
From page 229...
... Anti-Desertification Trials As already noted, aizen's helps people survive in some of the most desolate, dry, and infinitely difficult regions.12 Preserving aizen along the Sahara margins could be a first practical step in 12 For instance, when crops failed in the western Sudan (Kordofan) way back in 1900, aizen fruits were fed to the people and apparently this is what kept them alive in that era before rock stars and airlifts could rush in support from the world outside.
From page 230...
... , he did most of his botany, eventually naming some 600 North American species. Later, when the Swedish botanist Carl Peter Thunberg -- today recognized as the "Father of South African Botany" -- discovered a new genus of plants at the Cape of Good Hope, he named it Boscia in tribute.
From page 231...
... Perhaps Africa's second-best known Boscia species, the shepherd's tree or witgat is widespread in drier sections of southern Africa. It is found, for example, throughout Namibia and South Africa, as well as in parts of Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Mozambique.
From page 232...
... 232 LOST CROPS OF AFRICA South African research (carried out by the CSIR's Division of Food Science and Technology) has shown that the root kills fungi well enough to be used to preserve food.


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