Amaranth is a highly nutritious grain that is being promoted by CRWRC in East Africa as a nutritional supplement for children and adults. It has a high-quality protein content, and is high in calcium, iron, lysine, and folic acid. ECHO is also a major resource and promotion center for amaranth. Amaranth originates in Mexico, where it was used by the Maya in religious ceremonies. Cultivation was prohibited by the Spanish priests for this reason, and it mostly disappeared from diets until people began to take interest again in the 70s-now.

Amaranth in Xiengkhouang, Laos

Tom Post has been the major promoter of amaranth within CRWRC since the late 90s in partnership with Dick Dugger and Partners Worldwide. They produced a video about amaranth planting, harvesting, cooking, and health benefits. Tom Post gave me some seeds over a year ago to test in Xiengkhouang but since no one had shown any interest yet, I waited.

Hmong people in Laos have traditionally grown amaranth as a vegetable crop: they eat the leaves in soups and stir fries. I had never heard of anyone eating the amaranth grain until this week, when I came across a woman threshing purple grain amaranth sorghum in Vieng village, Kham district, Xiengkhouang province. According to Rick Burnette, this is the first confirmed SE Asia case of grain amaranth that he’s heard of. Here’s a photo album of amaranth in Laos, which I will continue to update with new pictures. It has pictures of purple amaranth that I saw last year in Khanghong, and the grain amaranth threshing in Vieng.

The Hmong woman who was threshing the amaranth sorghum said they ate it steamed and boiled, after having threshed, winnowed, and crushed the seeds. I took the opportunity to share with the small crowd that gathered about the benefits of eating amaranth, especially for children and mothers. I said that children should eat a little bit every day, about 20 grams or 3 spoonfuls. I congratulated the woman for her good practice and encouraged her to continue eating amaranth sorghum. I am excited and encouraged that some Hmong people already use grain amaranth, because that means it won’t be difficult to spread the word about its nutritional benefits and get families to plant it for eating.

Later I discussed my idea of promoting amaranth as an ag/health activity in the villages with an agriculture coworker, a village health volunteer, and the village leader. They were excited when I told them that I had some grain amaranth seed from another country and asked me to share some. Unfortunately, I have too little to share now until we plant it to produce seeds for giving to villagers.

Since then I’ve been talking about amaranth with anyone who is interested around my office. Hopefully we’ll get enough momentum rolling to begin a planting trial of amaranth this August. I had been planning to do a small one anyway, but it would be best if we could plant all the seed I have and grow enough seed to give out next year. I’ll talk with the Ag team about it on Monday, and perhaps we’ll look at the amaranth video together.

Traditionally Hmong people plant amaranth in April-June, but the heavy rains in July-August aren’t ideal for harvesting the seeds (although they are good leaf producers in the summer). Tom Post thinks that in SE Asia monsoon climates, amaranth could be planted one month before the end of the rains and it should mature before it gets too cold in December (when we occasionally have frosts). I will post about our amaranth trial on my blog if we do it.

Amaranth resources:

ECHO Technical Note on Amaranth: Grain and Vegetable Types (529KB PDF)

Amaranth in the EDN 100: Underutilized Food Plants

Amaranth Selections – a three page article on Amaranth

Amaranth seeds – at ECHO’s amazing seed bank – note that the ECHO Asia office in Chiang Mai may also have seeds.

Search the PROTA Database for “amaranth” to see detailed information on each variety

Names for Amaranth from the Asian Vegetables Thesaurus:

I stumbled across this photo album by MCC that touches on the same theme.

Last year, villages in Xiengkhouang and all across Laos decided to take advantage of the high market price of corn and increase their planting area dramatically. We saw corn fields more than double in size, in some cases up to ten times more than previous years. Farmers made significant investments in buying hybrid corn seeds from Vietnam (LVN-10). Some farmers chose to plant only corn and not plant any rice, a major change from their traditional ways. CRWRC staff warned farmers of the risks involved in planting only one crop, and tried to promote alternatives (hot peppers, peanuts, sunflower seeds, fattening cattle with improved grass varieties, etc).

Unfortunately, in the summer of 2008 the rains came 2-3 months earlier than normal and were quite heavy in July and August. This reduced corn yields significantly below previous years. In addition, there are rumors that some defective seeds were sold as if they were good-quality hybrid seeds (note: this is entirely unconfirmed!). Finally, when harvest time arrived, the market price of corn worldwide plummeted drastically, partly because of high local supply, and partly because the previous high price may have been artificially elevated by speculation in commodities markets (note: I may be wrong on this point; an agricultural economist may know better). The end result was that farmers received half the price they got last year: 500 kip/Kg (about $0.05 USD) instead of 1000 kip/Kg (and they were expecting to get 1500-2000 kip/Kg).

In two village meetings that I’ve attended recently, it was clear that farmers feel burned by the corn bubble and want to diversify their income base by trying new crops. This is a good opportunity for CRWRC to help them ask hard questions about how to grow things that will give them reliable income and not too much risk. Of course, farming is an inherently risky income source because it’s affected by the weather, land, seeds, farming skills, and the vagaries of global supply and demand. These two villages, Vieng and Namthoum, will probably continue to plant some corn, but in combination with upland rice (their main food source), pumpkins, peanuts, sunflowers, and hot peppers. Namthoum requested that CRWRC investigate the possibilities of planting cassava root and see if there are any potential buyers in the province. Raising cattle and pigs for sale with improved grasses and legumes has also proven to be a reliable source of income and is one of CRWRC’s Agriculture team’s lasting contributions to these villages.

IMG_2431

Originally uploaded by James Zwier.

This boy was standing alone and not playing with the other chidren. His serious face gave him a mature air. The perspective and wide angle on this picture make him seem much taller than he is. I took this picture while squatting down and was about at his height.

There’s also a landscape version of this picture on flickr. Which one do you like better? Leave your opinion in the comments.

It’s difficult to get good pictures of kids… this one took three tries to get right. These boys followed me around for a while after watching me take pictures. I showed them how the camera worked and they weren’t afraid of it after that.

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Life these days, briefly: we’re back in Laos for the long run and are settling into our home in Xiengkhuang. I am now a full-time CRWRC staff person – a Program Advisor for our Xiengkhuang office. This year I’ll be focusing on improving community health, particularly nutrition and mother/child health, and on strengthening community leadership.