The total package for beating hunger and poverty

"Cowpea is the wonder crop," Professor Irv Widders, Director of Pulses-CRSP at the Michigan State University, told participants to the 5th World Cowpea Research Conference in Saly, Senegal. "Many people associate pulses with poor people. The message they should be pushin that cowpeas and other pulses are the food of an educated person as one understands the nutritional value of cowpea they will make a conscious effort to consume them."

Cowpeas are treasured for their high protein content (grains contain about 25 percent protein), leaves and stalks that serve as especially nutritious fodder for cows (hence the name cowpea) and other farm animals, and the fact that their roots provide nitrogen to depleted soils. For many in Africa, the crop is a critical source of food during the “lean period”–-the end of the wet season when food can become extremely scarce in semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa.

The many qualities of the cowpea are being discovered anew for a number of reasons. One is the potential of the cowpea’s high protein content to help satisfy dietary requirements in food-challenged developing countries, particularly in Africa, where over 200 million people remain undernourished.

Prof. Widders warned that the global food crisis was still on and the world remained vulnerable to price fluctuations citing the food riots in Mozambique. Therefore it was important that policy makers should be convinced of the nutritional, health and sustainability value of cowpea to trigger investment in research and improvement in production and market value chains.

"We are dealing with a quality food product and a solution to nutritional needs as well as global health. We would be misguided just to look at one aspect," Prof Widders said lamenting the immense challenges in the way of cowpea helping achieve food security.

Key challenges included dealing with pests and disease, poor storage and high post harvest losses, bad agriculture practises, poor supply and poor farmer-access market linkages. In addition, a decline in the consumption of pulses was also cited as a key challenge confronting scientists as projections suggest that 50 percent more food will be needed by 2050 to feed a world population of 9 billion.

End/Busani Bafana/

Cowpea 2010: Scientists to meet in Dakar to boost cowpeas for food security

Hundreds of experts from around the world will gather in Dakar, Senegal from 27 September to 1 October 2010 for the Fifth World Cowpea Research Conference to discuss threats to the survival and farm production of black eyed peas—one of Africa's oldest and most resilient and nutritious crops.

From its humble origins in the drier regions of West Africa, where farmers have grown the black-eyed pea (also known as cowpea) for 5000 years, it was carried to the United States in the bellies of slave ships, and then introduced to the world through international trade. Today, black-eyed peas are a global commodity, grown in nearly every region of the world. Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for about 70 percent of total world production.

“Black-eyed peas have been largely neglected despite their multiple benefits and the fact that developing new, high-yield varieties could boost farm incomes by as much as 50 percent while improving household nutrition.” --Hartmann, director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA)

In years to come, scientists believe that black-eyed peas could lead the way in Africa’s effort to fight malnutrition among its growing population and confront the effects of climate change. The shifting weather patterns threatening to desiccate farmer’s fields across the continent put a spotlight on crops like the black-eyed pea that are rich in vitamins and protein and do well in hot, dry conditions. Black-eyed peas have the added benefit of releasing nitrogen that revives depleted soils.

“Black-eyed peas have been largely neglected despite their multiple benefits and the fact that developing new, high-yield varieties could boost farm incomes by as much as 50 percent while improving household nutrition,” said Hartmann, director general of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), which is co-hosting the World Cowpea Research Conference with the Government of Senegal, the Dry Grain Pulses Collaborative Research Support Program, and Purdue University. "Today we see scientists racing against time to rescue and conserve cowpea varieties that can help farmers deal with pests and diseases and adapt to changing environments.”

Scientists will meet in Dakar to discuss key constraints to cowpea production, share progress being made in advanced cowpea genomics, and consider the best ways to unlock cowpea’s potential as a hedge against climate change, hunger, and poverty.