Higher Protein Than Rice, Grows Without Irrigation — Why Did We Replace It?

For centuries, food security has been defined by irrigation, synthetic inputs, and large-scale systems designed for control. Yet long before modern agriculture, entire regions relied on a grain that grew without irrigation, matured in weeks, and provided reliable nutrition in harsh conditions.

This documentary explores fonio, one of the oldest cultivated grains in West Africa. Traditionally grown without fertilizers or mechanized tools, fonio sustained communities across the Sahel for thousands of years. It offered measurable protein, adapted to poor soils, and produced food quickly where other crops struggled.

So why was it replaced?

Rather than disappearing biologically, fonio faded as agricultural systems shifted toward crops optimized for scale, uniformity, and centralized processing. This video examines how colonial crop standardization, industrial agriculture, and modern supply chains gradually sidelined a grain designed for resilience rather than throughput.

As climate variability increases and irrigation-dependent systems face new limits, fonio reappears—not as a solution, but as a reference point that challenges prevailing assumptions about efficiency and food security.

What you’ll hear:
• how fonio fed West African societies for thousands of years
• its nutritional profile and drought tolerance
• why modern agriculture favored other grains
• how “neglected crops” are defined and sidelined
• what fonio reveals about resilience versus scalability
• why some reliable foods vanish without failing

This is not a story about rediscovery.
It’s a story about how systems decide what counts as food.

#ForgottenGrains #FoodSystems #GreenVault