All you need to know about enset - the “false banana” with a big impact

By Eleanor Robinson, Ripple Effect

This relative of the banana family has been cultivated for hundreds of years in Ethiopia by communities that know how to propagate it and process the leaf stems and root corm for food. Enset produces the popular local staples kocho flatbread, amicho (like boiled potato), and bulla pancakes and porridge.

The midribs of the leaves are used for animal fodder, while the leaves themselves are used for lining thatched roofs and wrapping food. The fibre by-product katcha is used for making rope, twine and baskets and dried leaf stems are used a packing materials – the local equivalent of foam plastic or polystyrene.

This is truly a waste-not, want-not crop: any leftovers from harvesting are fed to cattle.

Dense plantations of these magnificent plants can be seen growing alongside thatched homes in kebeles across the southern Ethiopian highlands. Fifteen enset can feed a family for an entire year, which makes it more productive per square metre than almost any cereal crop. It’s widely used by around 20 million people in Ethiopia, almost a sixth of the country’s population.

We’ve chosen this remarkable crop as the focus of our summer anti-hunger fundraising campaign for its value as a drought-resilient famine food which could be cultivated more widely in Ethiopia and has a lot to teach us about the value of a highly bio-diverse plant.

It’s also important for the indigenous knowledge that maintains its cultivation, which we support in our projects in the Sidama and Dawuro regions.

Processing harvested enset requires specialist skills and respected traditional knowledge. It’s largely women’s business, a laborious but sociable communal activity:

I have been producing enset crop since I started living in this area. Enset is our beloved cultural food. It is our backbone. If there is no enset, there is no living on the earth. It’s the fundamental food of our diet. - Fantaye, Bensa district Ethiopia

More than 1,200 landraces (varieties) of enset have been recorded: it’s intensely studied by researchers including Prof Abebe Mengesha Wendawek of Addis Ababa University and his colleague Dr James Borrell of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, who recently met with Ripple Effect Ethiopia Country Director Aklilu Dogisso, and visited enset growing in Tulema Tama kebele as part of the Ripple Effect Strengthening Local Institutions project there.

James Borrell has found that the wild varieties of enset tolerate different climate conditions, which could prove vital for the future. Enset’s prolific ability to propagate (one mother plant can produce up to 400 suckers) means it could have a central role to play in the face of climate crisis and increasing food insecurity.

Aklilu Dogisso says:

“Farmers already know the advantages of different varieties of enset. We support farmers to think about which varieties they need: some are important for their medicinal value and some for food. Some varieties have a different taste. We help families to identify these.” - Aklilu, Ripple Effect Ethiopia Country Director

Imagine a crop you could propagate without seeds. A crop you can allow to keep growing year after year, only harvesting when you need it, at any time of the year. A ready food source regardless of the season or weather conditions.

And imagine an essential food you can store for more than six months - without a refrigerator or vacuum-packing or drying. By burying it underground.

All this makes enset a unique and highly dependable buffer crop.

Ensete ventricosum (alias the “false banana”, the Ethiopian Banana and the Abyssinian Red Banana) is – like a banana – technically classified as a herb. The ‘trunk’ or pseudostem is not woody: it’s actually the shafts of the leaves wrapped closely together, which can be cut off and broken down for cooking by scraping. The “root” corm is the part of the stem growing underground which can be cooked like potato, as amicho.

Pulp from the leaf sheafs and grated corm are pulverised together to start them fermenting, then the dough is put into a hole in the ground lined with enset leaves, covered and left for six months or more before being used to make kocho.

The liquid squeezed from the pulverised leaf-stems and corm is dried to a white flour – bulla.

Ripple Effect Ethiopia Director Aklilu Dogisso grew up in the enset-cultivating region and describes himself as an “enset boy”:

“When we were children we would walk kilometres to school and stay there for the week in a rented room. Kocho bread made from enset lasts long without spoiling, so it would sustain us over the week before we headed home. Enset is very important for students who go to school far away from their parents.” - Aklilu, Ripple Effect Ethiopia Country Director

Like rice, enset is a multipurpose staple crop. Also like rice, it contains some vital nutrients and minerals and is an important tummy-filler food, but it’s low in protein and some essential vitamins. Families need to grow and eat other foods for healthy, varied nutrition that supports strong growth.

Ripple Effect’s whole-farm systems approach produces a balanced, rainbow plate diet. Kitchen garden techniques maximise soil-moisture retention for vegetable-growing. Raising one or two cows, or goats or chickens, introduces valuable protein to the family diet, as well as producing just-as-valuable manure which makes compost for vegetables and fast-growing enset.

Livestock can eat the enset leaves, and as the leaf stems of enset hold a lot of water, they can be valuable cattle fodder during drought. It’s a sustainable cycle.

Unlike many agricultural interventions which favour new wonder-crop varieties and vulnerable monocultures, Ripple Effect’s project work supports and shares successful indigenous farming knowledge.

In communities where enset is grown, our project leaders may have proposed spacing out enset plantations to allow for intercropping. Shade is valuable for crops such as coffee and sorghum, as well as vegetables, mango and avocado trees, and small-scale coffee-growing supports income development from a cash crop, without abandoning food-growing.

Watch the video below to see enset in Bensa, in the Sidama region of Ethiopia.

Get to know more about the life-changing work we do in eastern Africa here.

Why not support us in delivering vital training to more farmers with this fun Top Bananas charity gift?