Quantifying Alternative Food Potential of Agricultural Residue in Rural Communities of Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

African countries have been severely affected by food insecurity such that 54% of the population (73 million people) are acutely food insecure, in crisis or worse. Recent work has found technical potential for feeding humanity during global catastrophes using leaves as stop-gap alternative foods. To determine the potential for adopting agricultural residue (especially crop leaves) as food in food-insecure areas, this study provides a new methodology to quantify the calories available from agricultural residue as alternative foods at the community scale. A case study is performed on thirteen communities in Nigeria to compare national level values to those available in rural communities. Two residue utilization cases were considered, including a pessimistic and an optimistic case for human-edible calories gained. Here, we show that between 3.0 and 13.8 million Gcal are available in Nigeria per year from harvesting agricultural residue as alternative food. This is enough to feed between 3.9 and 18.1 million people per year, covering from 10 to 48% of Nigeria’s current estimated total food deficit.

Open-Source Flexible Materials Tensile Testing Apparatus

“…This area of research, now known as resilient foods, has increased rapidly [20,21] with many systems focusing on ASRSs [22,23]. Leaf protein concentrate [24,25] is promising for both trees [26] as well as agricultural waste [27], but only in the short term (first 6 months from an ASRS). Other resilient food solutions include low-tech greenhouse crop production [28], sugar from lignocellulosic biomass [29], single cell protein from natural gas [30] and hydrogen [31], and synthetic fat from petroleum [32].…”