The Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (NAMDE­V­CO) is giv­ing as­sur­ances to the pub­lic that its al­ter­na­tive to wheat flour, avail­able at its Farm­ers’ Mar­kets, just might be what the coun­try needs to get through the cur­rent food prices cri­sis af­fect­ing the globe.

An of­fi­cial state­ment is­sued by NAMDE­V­CO to­day is en­cour­ag­ing the pub­lic to ful­ly ex­plore what al­ter­na­tive flour prod­ucts can do and is invit­ing the pub­lic to take ad­van­tage of an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn how to use the dif­fer­ent types of flour pro­duced lo­cal­ly.

“We are aware that coun­tries are be­ing faced with lim­it­ed sup­plies of wheat flour which is like­ly to cre­ate an im­bal­ance in the sup­ply and de­mand of wheat for do­mes­tic use,” NAMDE­V­CO said. “This Sun­day at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah Farm­ers’ Mar­ket, NAMDE­V­CO will have a recipe demon­stra­tion on the dif­fer­ent types of lo­cal­ly pro­duced flour from cas­sa­va and sweet pota­to.”

Person kneading wheat flour to make bread. Image by Giulio Perricone from Pixabay .

Ac­cord­ing to NAMDE­V­CO, lo­cal farm­ers have the ca­pac­i­ty to pro­duce al­ter­na­tive sources of flour.

“Our mon­i­tor­ing records in­di­cate con­sis­tent quar­ter­ly pro­duc­tion of 1.15 mil­lion kg of sweet pota­toes and 1.07 mil­lion kg of cas­sa­va, which can be read­i­ly con­vert­ed in­to root crop flour. This da­ta shows that farm­ers con­tin­ue to suc­cess­ful­ly pro­duce a wide range of root crops de­spite ex­ter­nal fac­tors that can af­fect pro­duc­tion, in­clu­sive of cli­mate change,” the or­gan­i­sa­tion re­port­ed.

It added: “These com­pos­ite flours are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble and nu­tri­tious. Flour made from both cas­sa­va and sweet pota­to sources are on sale week­ly at a num­ber of our Farm­ers Mar­kets, in­clu­sive of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah Famers’ Mar­ket.”

Sweet potatoes and eddoes on sale at a NAMDEVCO Farmers Market in April 2022. (Image courtesy NAMDEVCO)

NAMDE­V­CO rec­om­mends that com­bin­ing lo­cal flours with wheat flour can help, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing nu­tri­tion­al val­ue.

“NAMDE­V­CO en­cour­ages the use of com­pos­ite flours made us­ing a ra­tio of root crop flour and wheat when prepar­ing meals, which are eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble and nu­tri­tious,” the com­pa­ny said. 

“We re­main com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with an av­enue to ac­quire lo­cal goods and pro­duce, at con­sis­tent and rea­son­able prices… from ‘Farm to Ta­ble’ to meet our food and nu­tri­tion se­cu­ri­ty de­mands,” it added.