“Local Crops Make Nutritious Flour,” Says Head Of SPC’s CETC

21st March 2012

“Local Crops Make Nutritious Flour,” Says Head Of SPC’s CETC.

Greater food value, economically viable, local resource material: these features make flour production at the Community Education and Training Centre (CETC) anything but ‘run-of-the-mill’.

“We have been working with women at the grassroots level, showing them how to make flour from kumala, breadfruit, dalo and cassava - homemade flour from homegrown crops - instead of being dependant upon imported flour, which may be expensive, or unavailable in more remote places,” said Dr Lia Maka, Head of CETC.

“We try to encourage people to plant these crops in their back yard to use for their own benefit as a part of the training in Food and Nutrition.”

As many as 36 women at a time, from 22 Pacific Island Countries and Territories, attend the seven-month courses that are held once a year at CETC in Narere, on the outskirts of Suva City, Fiji. CETC is a part of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) Education, Training and Human Development Division. .

The women, who are first selected for the course by their governments and then short-listed for final selection by the CETC management team, also tend their own gardens at CETC for the Integrated Agriculture segment of their studies, growing the dalo, cassava and kumala that will be made into flour.

Once the crops are ready for harvesting, they are collected, cleaned, and cut into very thin slices. These chips are then placed in a large, outdoors container with a hard, clear plastic cover, a solar food drier. In hot sunny weather, the slices will become dried chips half a day, but could take up to two or three days if it is cloudy.

The chips, which will keep for up to two years, are then ground into flour, using a Chinese-manufactured Disk Mill machine that turns a kilo of dalo, kumala or breadfruit chips into 900 grams, and cassava chips into 800 grams, of flour in two minutes.

The same effect can also be achieved with a minimum of technology. Chips can be placed outside on mats in the sun and will dry within a week. These can be ground into flour using a mortar and pestle or lentil grinder, or by pounding in the same way that yaqona is prepared, and then sifted.

During the course, the women experiment with the homegrown flour, substituting it for wheat flour in familiar recipes, turning out cassava flour chocolate cakes or dalo flour pancakes.

“Apart from the economic advantages of making flour from home-grown crops, food prepared from these home grown flours have an enhanced nutritional value, especially breadfruit, which contains carbohydrate, fibre, vitamin B, potassium, iron, calcium, copper and magnesium,” said Dr Maka.

“They are also useful substitutes for people with wheat allergies or a gluten intolerance. And because the chips have a long shelf life, it is also possible for the women to teach others in their home communities how to provide food for their families, not only as apart of daily life, but also in times of extreme weather events such as flood, cyclone or drought.”

“The flour production is part of a food processing training module in the CETC’s Health and Nutrition course, which includes recipe and product development using appropriate technologies suitable for coping with climate change and/or natural disaster phenomena, increased costs of processed food, and changing livelihood demands in our fragile Pacific communities.”

ENDS

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