An excerpt from Studio H's Millets Report. The Millets Report can be downloaded from our online store.
Millets are a diverse group of small seed cereal crops many of which evolved in Africa. Archaeo-botanical research places their ancient domestication from wild grass species at the origins of agriculture and as such they are fundamental to human history. The earliest evidence of finger millet cultivation (dating back 5000 years) was excavated at Axum, Ethiopia.[i]Charred, ground pearl millet residues from the fourth millennium BCE have been recovered from both the Birimi site, northern Ghana and Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania.[ii] Sudanese archaeologists examining plant impressions within broken pottery from the Butana culture discovered evidence for domesticated sorghum from 3500 BCE.[iii]Teff from 2000 BCE has been identified at Lalibela cave, Ethiopia.[iv]Fonio at Cubalel, Senegal has been dated to the Late Iron Age (i.e., the last few centuries BCE) - although linguistic evidence indicates a much more ancient origin.[v]
As the continent’s original, cultivated staple food crops, millets are frequently cited in traditional African belief systems as the sacred, primal life force. In Mali, classical Dogon cosmology has a Fonio seed (described by the Dogon as the ‘seed of the universe’) floating through the dark emptiness of space before creation. The seed, which is said to have contained within it the potential for all existence, gradually expanded under the pressure of internal vibrations until it formed an oval mass that the Dogon describe as the ‘egg (or womb) of the world’.[vi]
South Sudanese Dinka people revere Abuk, the first woman, who rebelled against the meagre millet rations provided by Nhialic, the creator. While sowing extra, unauthorised millet seeds, Abuk inadvertently struck Nhialic with a hoe whereupon the deity retreated from humanity, severing the rope that had hitherto connected heaven and earth. Some versions say that the break came when Abuk accidentally struck the sky while lifting her pestle to pound millet. Cutting the link between heaven and earth introduced previously unknown sickness and death but it also brought autonomy. Through her subsequent union with another free being, Deng, fertility and abundance were born. Although originally a mortal woman, Abuk was later elevated to divine status and presided over women's activities, especially the growing of millet and the brewing of millet beer.[vii]
Abuk is one of many African mother earth figures bestowing the sacred, transformative gift of fermentation upon women. In South Africa, Nomkhubulwane (also known as Mbaba Mwana Waresa) the Zulu goddess of rain, agriculture and fertility is credited with teaching Zulu women how to brew beer. One of the traditional ceremonies associated with Nomkhubulwane involves young women creating a sacred millet garden and making offerings of beer to ensure successful harvests.[viii]
Across Africa, indigenous millet seeds and/or the beers that are brewed from them are commonly understood as connecting communities to creators, ancestors, land and life cycles. Ceremonial libations often open channels of communication with the spiritual realm and frequently mark ritualised life stage transitions such as childbirth, initiation into adulthood, marriage and funerals.
Outside of specific rituals, brewing and selling of traditional beer for social consumption is generally considered the prerogative of women providing gender-specific economic opportunities. Millet beer also facilitates reciprocal labour exchange in many rural African communities as neighbours work to harvest each other’s fields. The host family provides millet beer as sustenance and a symbolic acknowledgement of ancient bonds to each other, to the land, and to shared ancestors and deities.
Millet’s sacred and social significance has persisted almost everywhere in Africa. Its secular status as a 21st century staple food is much less secure. For much of the 19th and 20thcentury, maize was associated with modernity and strongly supported within the agricultural policies of successive colonial and independent governments. Sometimes the switch away from heritage grains was forced on farmers but often such decisions were made based on available information and prevailing conditions. When backed by state and international subsidies for water and fossil fuel dependent fertiliser, maize does produce higher yields than those of small grains. It also has lower labour demands for weeding, bird scaring, harvesting and processing. While many communities keep small pockets of indigenous ancient millets for traditional beer making, there has been a widespread shift to maize as the staple crop.
The negative nutritional and environmental impacts of such strategies are increasingly apparent but reversing long-held, previously promoted farming and consumption patterns is complex. While subsistence farmers do exist, those growing exclusively for their own consumption are few and far between. Most African farmers are, to at least some extent, producing to sell. As such they need confidence that the agricultural value chain can support such a switch. A farmer contemplating converting maize fields to millet requires a grain buyer to take and process the crop. The buyer needs to be able to sell it to distribution channels that can take it to the end user. Everyone must have confidence that the projected end user wants to buy, cook and eat millet. Only then can a farmer justify allocating often scarce resources to millet.
Over a century of explicit and subliminal messaging around the sophistication of refined maize (and to a lesser but still significant extent wheat and rice) relative to indigenous grains has created consumer resistance with widespread perceptions of millet as old-fashioned and/or poverty food. Over several generations, many communities have lost the taste for such ingredients. Even where this is not the case, ancient grain culinary skills may have been lost and/or time constraints do not allow for their longer cooking times. In some countries (most notably South Africa) urban supermarkets seldom(if ever) stock millets (outside of the mix seed packets in the bird food aisle) making it almost impossible for even the most eager consumers to purchase the product. Even where the unprocessed product is available, millet-based pre-prepared snacks such as biscuits or chips that fit into urban consumption patterns are rarely sold outside of high-priced health shops.
Any effort to promote the growing and eating of millet must overcome the above obstacles. Fortunately, there is a successful model pioneered by New York-based, Senegalese-born chef Pierre Thiam who has been central to the promotion of Fonio. Thiam’s company, Yolele Foods, currently works with 1,400 women-run Fonio growing and processing cooperatives in rural Senegal and is set to expand operations into north and central Mali in early 2023. Yolelesells into West Africa, Europe and the USA. Fairtrade mechanisms mitigate against the risk of the superfood curse that has seen previous indigenous ingredients (e.g., quinoa) become Western food fashions to the detriment of the communities from whence they come. Thiam says that “Fonio has the potential to transform the economic and environmental landscape of rural West Africa, that’s what drives us at Yolele. We think that the combination of a Fairtrade export market and a beneficial, commercial-scale supply chain will provide life-changing results for smallholder farmers and promote biodiverse, regenerative, and resilient food systems.”[ix]
Any attempt to transition out of the climate crisis, must not only recognise but also revere and rejoice in human complexity. We are all spiritual, social, economic and culinary beings whose existence is dependent on a fragile and damaged environment. Ancient cosmologies and modern agricultural science agree that millets contain exponential potential for autonomy and abundance. The 2023 International Year of Millets offers an opportunity to connect past and present for the sake of our future.
Sources:
[i]Archaeobotanical Studies of Eleusine coracana ssp. coracana (Finger Millet). K. W. Hilu, J. M.J. de Wet and J. R. Harlan. American Journal of Botany. Vol. 66, No. 3 (Mar.,1979): 330-333.
[ii]Pearl Millet and Kintampo Subsistence. D'Andrea, A. C.; Casey, J. The African Archaeological Review. Vol. 19, No. 3 (April2002): 147–173.
[iii]Earliest evidence for a native African cultigen discovered in Eastern Sudan. ScienceDaily. September 27, 2017.
[iv]The Emergence of Food Production in Ethiopia. Barnett, T. Oxford: BAR International Series, No.763. 1999.
[v]Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agriculture.History. Roger Blench. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 102007.
[vi]The Dogon Creation Story. Chukwuma Azuonye, University of Massachusetts Boston. 1999. file:///C:/Users/annat/Downloads/fulltext_stamped.pdf
[vii]Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka.Oxford University Press. Lienhardt,Godfrey 1987.
[viii]African Religions and Philosophy. John Mbiti. AfricanWriters Series. Heinemann 1990.
[ix]Pierre Thiam personal communication December 2022.
An excerpt from Studio H's Millets Report. The Millets Report can be downloaded from our online store.
Millets are a diverse group of small seed cereal crops many of which evolved in Africa. Archaeo-botanical research places their ancient domestication from wild grass species at the origins of agriculture and as such they are fundamental to human history. The earliest evidence of finger millet cultivation (dating back 5000 years) was excavated at Axum, Ethiopia.[i]Charred, ground pearl millet residues from the fourth millennium BCE have been recovered from both the Birimi site, northern Ghana and Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania.[ii] Sudanese archaeologists examining plant impressions within broken pottery from the Butana culture discovered evidence for domesticated sorghum from 3500 BCE.[iii]Teff from 2000 BCE has been identified at Lalibela cave, Ethiopia.[iv]Fonio at Cubalel, Senegal has been dated to the Late Iron Age (i.e., the last few centuries BCE) - although linguistic evidence indicates a much more ancient origin.[v]
As the continent’s original, cultivated staple food crops, millets are frequently cited in traditional African belief systems as the sacred, primal life force. In Mali, classical Dogon cosmology has a Fonio seed (described by the Dogon as the ‘seed of the universe’) floating through the dark emptiness of space before creation. The seed, which is said to have contained within it the potential for all existence, gradually expanded under the pressure of internal vibrations until it formed an oval mass that the Dogon describe as the ‘egg (or womb) of the world’.[vi]
South Sudanese Dinka people revere Abuk, the first woman, who rebelled against the meagre millet rations provided by Nhialic, the creator. While sowing extra, unauthorised millet seeds, Abuk inadvertently struck Nhialic with a hoe whereupon the deity retreated from humanity, severing the rope that had hitherto connected heaven and earth. Some versions say that the break came when Abuk accidentally struck the sky while lifting her pestle to pound millet. Cutting the link between heaven and earth introduced previously unknown sickness and death but it also brought autonomy. Through her subsequent union with another free being, Deng, fertility and abundance were born. Although originally a mortal woman, Abuk was later elevated to divine status and presided over women's activities, especially the growing of millet and the brewing of millet beer.[vii]
Abuk is one of many African mother earth figures bestowing the sacred, transformative gift of fermentation upon women. In South Africa, Nomkhubulwane (also known as Mbaba Mwana Waresa) the Zulu goddess of rain, agriculture and fertility is credited with teaching Zulu women how to brew beer. One of the traditional ceremonies associated with Nomkhubulwane involves young women creating a sacred millet garden and making offerings of beer to ensure successful harvests.[viii]
Across Africa, indigenous millet seeds and/or the beers that are brewed from them are commonly understood as connecting communities to creators, ancestors, land and life cycles. Ceremonial libations often open channels of communication with the spiritual realm and frequently mark ritualised life stage transitions such as childbirth, initiation into adulthood, marriage and funerals.
Outside of specific rituals, brewing and selling of traditional beer for social consumption is generally considered the prerogative of women providing gender-specific economic opportunities. Millet beer also facilitates reciprocal labour exchange in many rural African communities as neighbours work to harvest each other’s fields. The host family provides millet beer as sustenance and a symbolic acknowledgement of ancient bonds to each other, to the land, and to shared ancestors and deities.
Millet’s sacred and social significance has persisted almost everywhere in Africa. Its secular status as a 21st century staple food is much less secure. For much of the 19th and 20thcentury, maize was associated with modernity and strongly supported within the agricultural policies of successive colonial and independent governments. Sometimes the switch away from heritage grains was forced on farmers but often such decisions were made based on available information and prevailing conditions. When backed by state and international subsidies for water and fossil fuel dependent fertiliser, maize does produce higher yields than those of small grains. It also has lower labour demands for weeding, bird scaring, harvesting and processing. While many communities keep small pockets of indigenous ancient millets for traditional beer making, there has been a widespread shift to maize as the staple crop.
The negative nutritional and environmental impacts of such strategies are increasingly apparent but reversing long-held, previously promoted farming and consumption patterns is complex. While subsistence farmers do exist, those growing exclusively for their own consumption are few and far between. Most African farmers are, to at least some extent, producing to sell. As such they need confidence that the agricultural value chain can support such a switch. A farmer contemplating converting maize fields to millet requires a grain buyer to take and process the crop. The buyer needs to be able to sell it to distribution channels that can take it to the end user. Everyone must have confidence that the projected end user wants to buy, cook and eat millet. Only then can a farmer justify allocating often scarce resources to millet.
Over a century of explicit and subliminal messaging around the sophistication of refined maize (and to a lesser but still significant extent wheat and rice) relative to indigenous grains has created consumer resistance with widespread perceptions of millet as old-fashioned and/or poverty food. Over several generations, many communities have lost the taste for such ingredients. Even where this is not the case, ancient grain culinary skills may have been lost and/or time constraints do not allow for their longer cooking times. In some countries (most notably South Africa) urban supermarkets seldom(if ever) stock millets (outside of the mix seed packets in the bird food aisle) making it almost impossible for even the most eager consumers to purchase the product. Even where the unprocessed product is available, millet-based pre-prepared snacks such as biscuits or chips that fit into urban consumption patterns are rarely sold outside of high-priced health shops.
Any effort to promote the growing and eating of millet must overcome the above obstacles. Fortunately, there is a successful model pioneered by New York-based, Senegalese-born chef Pierre Thiam who has been central to the promotion of Fonio. Thiam’s company, Yolele Foods, currently works with 1,400 women-run Fonio growing and processing cooperatives in rural Senegal and is set to expand operations into north and central Mali in early 2023. Yolelesells into West Africa, Europe and the USA. Fairtrade mechanisms mitigate against the risk of the superfood curse that has seen previous indigenous ingredients (e.g., quinoa) become Western food fashions to the detriment of the communities from whence they come. Thiam says that “Fonio has the potential to transform the economic and environmental landscape of rural West Africa, that’s what drives us at Yolele. We think that the combination of a Fairtrade export market and a beneficial, commercial-scale supply chain will provide life-changing results for smallholder farmers and promote biodiverse, regenerative, and resilient food systems.”[ix]
Any attempt to transition out of the climate crisis, must not only recognise but also revere and rejoice in human complexity. We are all spiritual, social, economic and culinary beings whose existence is dependent on a fragile and damaged environment. Ancient cosmologies and modern agricultural science agree that millets contain exponential potential for autonomy and abundance. The 2023 International Year of Millets offers an opportunity to connect past and present for the sake of our future.
Sources:
[i]Archaeobotanical Studies of Eleusine coracana ssp. coracana (Finger Millet). K. W. Hilu, J. M.J. de Wet and J. R. Harlan. American Journal of Botany. Vol. 66, No. 3 (Mar.,1979): 330-333.
[ii]Pearl Millet and Kintampo Subsistence. D'Andrea, A. C.; Casey, J. The African Archaeological Review. Vol. 19, No. 3 (April2002): 147–173.
[iii]Earliest evidence for a native African cultigen discovered in Eastern Sudan. ScienceDaily. September 27, 2017.
[iv]The Emergence of Food Production in Ethiopia. Barnett, T. Oxford: BAR International Series, No.763. 1999.
[v]Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agriculture.History. Roger Blench. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 102007.
[vi]The Dogon Creation Story. Chukwuma Azuonye, University of Massachusetts Boston. 1999. file:///C:/Users/annat/Downloads/fulltext_stamped.pdf
[vii]Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka.Oxford University Press. Lienhardt,Godfrey 1987.
[viii]African Religions and Philosophy. John Mbiti. AfricanWriters Series. Heinemann 1990.
[ix]Pierre Thiam personal communication December 2022.
An excerpt from Studio H's Millets Report. The Millets Report can be downloaded from our online store.
Millets are a diverse group of small seed cereal crops many of which evolved in Africa. Archaeo-botanical research places their ancient domestication from wild grass species at the origins of agriculture and as such they are fundamental to human history. The earliest evidence of finger millet cultivation (dating back 5000 years) was excavated at Axum, Ethiopia.[i]Charred, ground pearl millet residues from the fourth millennium BCE have been recovered from both the Birimi site, northern Ghana and Dhar Tichitt in Mauritania.[ii] Sudanese archaeologists examining plant impressions within broken pottery from the Butana culture discovered evidence for domesticated sorghum from 3500 BCE.[iii]Teff from 2000 BCE has been identified at Lalibela cave, Ethiopia.[iv]Fonio at Cubalel, Senegal has been dated to the Late Iron Age (i.e., the last few centuries BCE) - although linguistic evidence indicates a much more ancient origin.[v]
As the continent’s original, cultivated staple food crops, millets are frequently cited in traditional African belief systems as the sacred, primal life force. In Mali, classical Dogon cosmology has a Fonio seed (described by the Dogon as the ‘seed of the universe’) floating through the dark emptiness of space before creation. The seed, which is said to have contained within it the potential for all existence, gradually expanded under the pressure of internal vibrations until it formed an oval mass that the Dogon describe as the ‘egg (or womb) of the world’.[vi]
South Sudanese Dinka people revere Abuk, the first woman, who rebelled against the meagre millet rations provided by Nhialic, the creator. While sowing extra, unauthorised millet seeds, Abuk inadvertently struck Nhialic with a hoe whereupon the deity retreated from humanity, severing the rope that had hitherto connected heaven and earth. Some versions say that the break came when Abuk accidentally struck the sky while lifting her pestle to pound millet. Cutting the link between heaven and earth introduced previously unknown sickness and death but it also brought autonomy. Through her subsequent union with another free being, Deng, fertility and abundance were born. Although originally a mortal woman, Abuk was later elevated to divine status and presided over women's activities, especially the growing of millet and the brewing of millet beer.[vii]
Abuk is one of many African mother earth figures bestowing the sacred, transformative gift of fermentation upon women. In South Africa, Nomkhubulwane (also known as Mbaba Mwana Waresa) the Zulu goddess of rain, agriculture and fertility is credited with teaching Zulu women how to brew beer. One of the traditional ceremonies associated with Nomkhubulwane involves young women creating a sacred millet garden and making offerings of beer to ensure successful harvests.[viii]
Across Africa, indigenous millet seeds and/or the beers that are brewed from them are commonly understood as connecting communities to creators, ancestors, land and life cycles. Ceremonial libations often open channels of communication with the spiritual realm and frequently mark ritualised life stage transitions such as childbirth, initiation into adulthood, marriage and funerals.
Outside of specific rituals, brewing and selling of traditional beer for social consumption is generally considered the prerogative of women providing gender-specific economic opportunities. Millet beer also facilitates reciprocal labour exchange in many rural African communities as neighbours work to harvest each other’s fields. The host family provides millet beer as sustenance and a symbolic acknowledgement of ancient bonds to each other, to the land, and to shared ancestors and deities.
Millet’s sacred and social significance has persisted almost everywhere in Africa. Its secular status as a 21st century staple food is much less secure. For much of the 19th and 20thcentury, maize was associated with modernity and strongly supported within the agricultural policies of successive colonial and independent governments. Sometimes the switch away from heritage grains was forced on farmers but often such decisions were made based on available information and prevailing conditions. When backed by state and international subsidies for water and fossil fuel dependent fertiliser, maize does produce higher yields than those of small grains. It also has lower labour demands for weeding, bird scaring, harvesting and processing. While many communities keep small pockets of indigenous ancient millets for traditional beer making, there has been a widespread shift to maize as the staple crop.
The negative nutritional and environmental impacts of such strategies are increasingly apparent but reversing long-held, previously promoted farming and consumption patterns is complex. While subsistence farmers do exist, those growing exclusively for their own consumption are few and far between. Most African farmers are, to at least some extent, producing to sell. As such they need confidence that the agricultural value chain can support such a switch. A farmer contemplating converting maize fields to millet requires a grain buyer to take and process the crop. The buyer needs to be able to sell it to distribution channels that can take it to the end user. Everyone must have confidence that the projected end user wants to buy, cook and eat millet. Only then can a farmer justify allocating often scarce resources to millet.
Over a century of explicit and subliminal messaging around the sophistication of refined maize (and to a lesser but still significant extent wheat and rice) relative to indigenous grains has created consumer resistance with widespread perceptions of millet as old-fashioned and/or poverty food. Over several generations, many communities have lost the taste for such ingredients. Even where this is not the case, ancient grain culinary skills may have been lost and/or time constraints do not allow for their longer cooking times. In some countries (most notably South Africa) urban supermarkets seldom(if ever) stock millets (outside of the mix seed packets in the bird food aisle) making it almost impossible for even the most eager consumers to purchase the product. Even where the unprocessed product is available, millet-based pre-prepared snacks such as biscuits or chips that fit into urban consumption patterns are rarely sold outside of high-priced health shops.
Any effort to promote the growing and eating of millet must overcome the above obstacles. Fortunately, there is a successful model pioneered by New York-based, Senegalese-born chef Pierre Thiam who has been central to the promotion of Fonio. Thiam’s company, Yolele Foods, currently works with 1,400 women-run Fonio growing and processing cooperatives in rural Senegal and is set to expand operations into north and central Mali in early 2023. Yolelesells into West Africa, Europe and the USA. Fairtrade mechanisms mitigate against the risk of the superfood curse that has seen previous indigenous ingredients (e.g., quinoa) become Western food fashions to the detriment of the communities from whence they come. Thiam says that “Fonio has the potential to transform the economic and environmental landscape of rural West Africa, that’s what drives us at Yolele. We think that the combination of a Fairtrade export market and a beneficial, commercial-scale supply chain will provide life-changing results for smallholder farmers and promote biodiverse, regenerative, and resilient food systems.”[ix]
Any attempt to transition out of the climate crisis, must not only recognise but also revere and rejoice in human complexity. We are all spiritual, social, economic and culinary beings whose existence is dependent on a fragile and damaged environment. Ancient cosmologies and modern agricultural science agree that millets contain exponential potential for autonomy and abundance. The 2023 International Year of Millets offers an opportunity to connect past and present for the sake of our future.
Sources:
[i]Archaeobotanical Studies of Eleusine coracana ssp. coracana (Finger Millet). K. W. Hilu, J. M.J. de Wet and J. R. Harlan. American Journal of Botany. Vol. 66, No. 3 (Mar.,1979): 330-333.
[ii]Pearl Millet and Kintampo Subsistence. D'Andrea, A. C.; Casey, J. The African Archaeological Review. Vol. 19, No. 3 (April2002): 147–173.
[iii]Earliest evidence for a native African cultigen discovered in Eastern Sudan. ScienceDaily. September 27, 2017.
[iv]The Emergence of Food Production in Ethiopia. Barnett, T. Oxford: BAR International Series, No.763. 1999.
[v]Vernacular names for African millets and other minor cereals and their significance for agriculture.History. Roger Blench. Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, Vol. 102007.
[vi]The Dogon Creation Story. Chukwuma Azuonye, University of Massachusetts Boston. 1999. file:///C:/Users/annat/Downloads/fulltext_stamped.pdf
[vii]Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka.Oxford University Press. Lienhardt,Godfrey 1987.
[viii]African Religions and Philosophy. John Mbiti. AfricanWriters Series. Heinemann 1990.
[ix]Pierre Thiam personal communication December 2022.
