Just as conversations about farmers living in a cycle of poverty, while those in the value chain mint money from using their agricultural products end, the culinary heritage of a country benefits the hoteliers in incomparable ways to the farmer.
BY CAROLINE MWENDWA
A year ago, a global gastro-economy summit was held at Istanbul, Turkey, hosted by Turkish Restaurant & Entertainment Association where national culinary brands were elevated as part of the creative economy. Speaking at the summit, the chief of UNCTAD’s Creative Economy Programme, Marisa Henderson, said entrepreneurs in developing countries can market new concepts and scale them as viable economic activities using gastronomic heritage. The Summit acted as a harbinger for developing economies to seize opportunities of the growing markets such as domestic tourism and foreign travel, national food products transforming into exported goods and cities becoming gastronomy brands.
Gastro-economy is slowly becoming a grand component of economic development. This practice, like a scent carried in the westerlies winds that blow from the West to Sub-Saharan Africa, is making a gradual sensation into the African countries.
While this is apparently a huge opportunity for the value addition chain, we are left to wonder what is in it for the farmer, without whom, there could be no culinary pride to talk about in the first place, and how best can farmers leverage on this growing trend? Just as conversations about farmers living a cycle of poverty, while those in the value chain mint money from using their agricultural products end, the culinary heritage of a country benefits the hoteliers in incomparable ways to the farmer. Yes, the farmer will have a ready market for the produce but at what price, in comparison to what the hotelier is making from turning the produce into food?
Chefs for change
The farmer is a key component of this industry whose force is often downplayed. There are very many ways in which we can elevate the farmers to the pedestal they deserve. Chefs for change is one example worth of hailing as it is built for this sole purpose. The initiative aims at appreciating the journey of food beyond its value on the plate by following through to the farmer who sows, cultivates and harvests it, with a view to empower them to grow economically. It was founded by three chefs, Joan Rocca, Gaggan Annand and Eneko Atxa. It operates by uniting the world’s best chefs and farmers in rural communities with the goal to enable sustainable farming.
Aware that the most of the ingredients they use to make the best cuisines, and upon which they have developed to become big wigs in their careers, are produced by small scale farmers whose potential is thwarted by poverty, environmental degradation, climate change and lack of access to markets, these three chefs launched the programme to alleviate these challenges.
Many chefs all over the world are invited to join in the course as there are fine-dining events held annually to recruit new chefs and strategize on ways to tackle various challenges that stifle farmers. Each chef is paired with high impact agriculture development programmes in Africa, Asia or Latin America. They travel out of the kitchen and onto farms in the developing world and share the stories of the small-scale producers they meet, in order to make agriculture work better for small-scale food producers.
“A dish is much more than the sum of its ingredients. If we consider its sourcing, we see that every ingredient has been created by a varied cast of human characters involved in every step of the food’s journey from land to the plate. The Chefs for Change movement wants to give a voice to these rural food producers and their life stories, and empower them to grow,” Joan Rocca one of the founding chefs is quoted.
The Kenyan scenario
The Nairobi Restaurant Week 2019 had the city lit from 28th February to 10th March, with various affluent eateries overflowing with diners hoping to make the best of offers on high end meals available. But there was nothing for the suppliers of the agricultural produce – the farmer – to fly on.
The place of the farmer in fine dining and high-end cuisine is as cement and water is to a building. The hospitality industry has numerous opportunities and ways to attract masses and even break borders to reach out to global markets using national culinary brands. Examples include South Korea, which has grown its sales of its fermented cabbage snack kimchi worldwide, Peru which has also seen a proliferation of its cuisine both domestically, as a draw for tourists, and internationally as Peruvian restaurants spread across cities around the world, among others. The potential of this industry is unlimited especially with the current trend in gastronomy. This presents a great opportunity for hoteliers to include farmers of the ingredients they use to design these lucrative cuisines in reaping this bumper harvest of an expanding market.
In conclusion, farmers are the main stem, from which hoteliers branch, the affluence of hoteliers are like the leaves and fruits that make a tree attractive and even valuable, but the stem remains dull and unnoticed. Unless the leaves the flowers and the fruits acknowledge the stem that hold them and push for its recognition, it will remain hidden and unappealing.
Caroline Mwendwa is the Editor Management Magazine. Email: cmwendwa@kim.ac.ke
