Brief History of Buckwheat in Zimbabwe

Buckwheat, currently classified as a superfood, originated in China. It is believed to have been brought into Zimbabwe in the 1940s. The crop has two varieties: fagopyrum esculentum and fagopyrum tataricum. The later variety is what we have in Zimbabwe. Upon introduction the crop was cultivated mainly by subsistence farmers who grew it for flour which they used to produce homemade bread. For some unknown reason, the crop was never grown commercially.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckwheat

By the late 1980s the subsistence farming of buckwheat had significantly declined due, perhaps, to the increasing availability of wheat flour and wheat bread after Zimbabwe gained independence. The decline in the growing of buckwheat may also have been caused by the rapidly increasing periods of drought experienced in the country which led to many farmers losing their buckwheat seed. Since the growing of the crop was never commercialized, no national seed banks had been established, thus buckwheat seed was gradually lost until the crop went virtually extinct by the mid-1990s. By the year 2000 buckwheat had virtually disappeared from the landscape of Zimbabwe and unwittingly people had lost one of the most nutritious crop.

Currently buckwheat is now classified as a super food due to its super-content of food nutrients, particularly antioxidants. What simply remained in the older farmers who used to eat buckwheat bread was a lingering memory of the unique flavor of buckwheat bread and buckwheat sadza (thick porridge). Then, a new turn in the cultivation of buckwheat happened in 2013 when one keen rare-crop farmer and researcher by the name, Pardon Mugari, stumbled upon a few grains of the original buckwheat seed that used to be cultivated in Zimbabwe from the 1920s.

The buckwheat seed grains where discovered in a certain old lady's hand-bag where they had been stashed for at least a decade. Upon discovery of the great treasure, the farmer immediately set off with the reproduction of the rare seeds starting with a small bed in his garden wherein he planted the first few grains of the treasured crop. Three months later a harvest of about one kilogram of buckwheat was obtained and the next round of reproduction was entered upon.

Leaving a few grains aside, the farmer planted the second generation of the seed. Unfortunately ground frost destroyed the whole crop in May 2014 and the farmer had to start all over again using the few reserved seed grains. With greater care the seed was rapidly multiplied so that by 2019 over five tons of buckwheat grain was now available for wider distribution to other farmers in the country.

Older farmers who knew buckwheat received the news of the comeback of the crop with great excitement. The buckwheat variety we have is an open pollinated varieties (OPV) and therefore farmers take their seed from the harvested grain. Of particular importance is the fact that the variety of buckwheat we have has not been genetically tempered with.