Conflict Resistant Crops: Defined

Good news from Africa!

It’s something you are very unlikely to hear from any global news outlet.

It isn’t that there is no good news, but that the entire world has come to expect only stories of war, famine, disease and poverty coming from Africa. It is difficult for news media to depart from the expected narrative. Of course, there is no shortage of bad news. Generations of exploitation and colonialism has had an impact. All too often, the result is conflict.

Uganda is our birthplace and it is no stranger to conflict. Even though today’s Uganda is a model of stability and peace in East Africa, crowded refugee settlements bear testimony to the unrelenting conflict of the larger region.

At Endiro Coffee, one of the reasons we are Endiro “Coffee” and not Endiro “Cattle” or “Corn” is precisely because of the persistent reality of conflict in the East African region and our desire to change the narrative. Given that our vision is to end child vulnerability, choosing coffee as our primary product was no accident. Coffee, as it turns out, is a great example of a “conflict resistant crop”.

What is a Conflict Resistant Crop?

According to the Center on Conflict and Resistance at Texas A&M University, crops that are easily stolen or destroyed are very vulnerable to the kind of armed conflict that is prevalent in many parts of the world, including in the East African region.

This makes sense if you think about it. Not that we want you to imagine a band of roving revolutionaries moving about from village to village, but if you do, you can picture them coming upon livestock or ready-to-consume crops, they are very likely to take such things by force in order to feed their ranks. However, if the crops require significant processing before consumption — for example vanilla, cassava, cacao, or coffee — these invading groups are more likely to pass over such crops. It is, for example, not often that warlords or even armies pass through lands with coffee pulpers, drying beds, mills and roasters.

A Conflict Resistant Crop thusly is “resistant” (not immune) to violent conflict. This is critical in the East African region where war, terrorism, genocide and revolution have been far too common. Imagine that you are a family from Rwanda which as been forced to flee inter-ethnic conflict. If you left a small farm of wheat and maize and livestock, you can bet that all of your livelihood would be consumed and gone in a matter of days or weeks. If you return a year later, you return to a barren land. If instead you have diversified your farming to include coffee, cacao, vanilla, and other Conflict Resistant Crops, you can likely return after a year to find that those crops still exist.

Put it on our grand bucket list of big hairy audacious goals, but we at Endiro desire to promote the concept of conflict resistant crops throughout East Africa and globally. Not that these should at all be the only crops that farmers grow, but undergirding every family farm in the region with a Conflict Resistant Crop will provide insurance against conflict and thus weaken the power of violence to perpetuate poverty.

We will be revisiting this topic in the future as we continue to learn. Until then, keep supporting Endiro Coffee and brewing all the good you can wherever you are.