Fonio

Digitaria exilis, referred to as findi or fundi in areas of Africa, such as The Gambia, with English common names white fonio, fonio millet, and hungry rice or acha rice, is a grass species.

John F Dean wrote:What can anyone tell me about Fonio?  Can it be grown in the Midwest?  My wife stumbled across an article on it and had become interested.

James turuc wrote:What PEST  affect  this grain?

Christopher Weeks wrote:This doesn't address its suitability to Midwest growing, ...

Christopher Weeks wrote:This doesn't address its suitability to Midwest growing, but I thought I'd lodge this article here: https://thinklandscape.globallandscapesforum.org/49170/from-west-africa-here-comes-the-next-miracle-grain-fonio/

Jay Angler wrote:

Christopher Weeks wrote:This doesn't address its suitability to Midwest growing, ...

The fact that the article says it can mature in as little as 6-8 weeks, seems to open possibilities in areas that get really hot in the summer, if they can count on the heat in a specific window.

The article doesn't say what the temperature range for that period must be. One article suggested that germination requires 25 to 30C (https://fonio.cirad.fr/en/the-plant/cultivation) however, it also mentions that in Guinea, it is produced at altitude where it's cooler.

Christopher's article is very interesting and certainly suggests that if you've got a micro-climate area that is consistently hot - possibly too hot for other crops - it would be worth some experiments. It certainly wouldn't grow in my cool climate!

However, there are permies using green houses for fall, winter and spring crops, but can't use them in the summer due to the heat. This might be a crop for that purpose. On my farm, "straw" from grain crops is very useful for all sorts of things, and is actually hard to come by at any sort of reasonable cost.

The talk in Christopher's article does worry me in one way - people encourage small farmers to produce a "product" for "an over-seas market" without considering that everything that is exported is removing nutrients from the land. I am happier with the permaculture approach which tries to look at the importance of closed-loop systems. [/quote

If the seed was easier to come by, I'd be willing to give it a whirl. I totally agree with you on the uses of fonio as straw, as well, and also on encouraging small farmers to grow their fonio for their 'foreign' market. It is their grain and it should benefit them first. I read elsewhere [and in French] that a local man had found a way to create a machine that was giving superior cleaning results as far as cleanliness of the seed. It looked somewhat like a coffee grinder, but just a bit larger.
It was still no the kind of machine that could process a hundred pounds an hour, but much better than doing it by hand.