Food journeys

This piece was written for the Ealing Quaker Meeting newsletter, whose theme this time is journeys.

It's a goal of British campaigners that consumers get fresh, nutritious food, travelling short distances and with trading relationships of equality. What about Rwanda?

First the plusses. Many fruit and vegetables are harvested and delivered daily to local markets or sold informally at the side of the road. Many people eat mostly the local staples – potatoes in the cooler north, cassava and sweet potatoes in the hotter, drier south and east. Because of the lack of refrigeration, most milk is consumed by the owners of the cow or sold to their close neighbours, and vegetables are bought every day or two. Beans are grown everywhere, stored in sacks, and eaten most days by most people. Green bananas are also ubiquitous, popular and affordable.

Local transport is in sacks or baskets or on trays, often carried on the head. For bigger loads a bicycle is either ridden or wheeled.* This low carbon system is supplemented by trucks that drive around picking up, for example, several tons of potatoes to be taken into town. Also on the main roads are huge lorries, sometimes labelled as carrying petrol or 'goods in transit' but more often anonymous.

Now some qualifications. It is usual for a small farmer to grow one or two kinds of vegetable for market but not to keep any for eating at home. Many people eat no fruit because all food should be cooked - we are not goats. So vitamin and mineral deficiencies are common, even when ugali (made from cassava, maize, sorghum, millet or combinations thereof) is eaten in large quantities with beans.

Sorghum makes a popular porridge as well as a slightly alcoholic beer. But planting it is now forbidden in large parts of the country. Even potatoes are banned. In more and more areas farmers are instructed to sow more and more maize, and undersized plants can be seen in many areas, often quite shrivelled up. It's taken me three weeks of asking around for the reason. Now I have it: somebody important has opened a factory producing maize meal. These sheds for drying maize cobs have recently appeared all over the place

More generally, there's insistence on monocultures under a policy called 'consolidation'. Local farmers, who traditionally grew several crops in a small field, don't like it but they have no choice and no voice. Presumably the ministry of agriculture forms its policies with advice from agribusinesses, who sell fertiliser and pesticides as well as a few 'improved' varieties of seeds. And perhaps, I'm told, the officials have seen something working in a more developed country and think it will be beneficial for us to copy it.** It's fortunate for my work that another part of the government is encouraging – even insisting on – kitchen gardens. Fields and compounds seem to be different domains.

Self-sufficiency in food production is a government goal, and makes good sense. Exports to the East African Community – where Kenya, Ugandan and Tanzania have recently been joined by Rwanda and Burundi – are growing. Rwanda produces some of the best coffee beans in the world and increasingly farmers are being helped to form cooperatives to process the raw 'cherries' to get a better profit from the crop. Pyrethrum (for insecticide) and milk also used to be processed here before the war; now a new pyrethrum factory has opened, and the bottled water company owned by the president's family has branched out into UHT milk (including semi-skimmed) and bottled fruit juices. Restaurants tend to offer Nestle powdered milk, imported from Poland or Holland.


This tin was lying in a pastor's garden, next to where the sack was to be planted...


Some sugar is grown and processed here, but the best is exported and what remains is poorer quality and more expensive than that imported from Uganda. Why would anybody buy it?

...and here's the sack


Rice imported from Tanzania, Vietnam and China is said to be better quality than that produced locally; poor people don't eat it anyway. Similarly, a little wheat is grown, but bread is not a staple and pasta (from Uganda or Kenya, or Turkey, or Italy) is considered too expensive for ordinary people.

Eastern Province has a government scheme to produce macadamia nuts. Some are reaching the supermarkets, now the trees are five years old, but they're more expensive than the imports from Kenya. And in any case, few people even know of the existence of nuts at all – they're another luxury for rich people.

In summary, there is trade within the region; there are some imports from further afield (and among non-food items soap, for example, may come from Indonesia or from Rwanda itself); enough different foods are produced for complete nutrition. There is severe rural poverty and hunger, however, despite some good soils and adequate rainfall for most of the country. Food miles are not the problem.

*The strangest use for a bicycle I've yet seen was the transport of a coffin - presumably uninhabited- resting across the rear passenger seat, accompanied by one young man at the handlebars, one at the head and one at the foot.

**On a recent drive to the east, I saw a huge area of dried up maize. What's that about, I asked. 'This land belongs to an army training establishment. They're probably demonstrating modern practice.' Yes, quite. But will the lesson be learnt?