Improving food security in famine-prone areas using invasive and underutilized prosopis trees

Climate change is already affecting food security across drylands in Africa and Asia. With challenges expected to increase in the future, peasant farmers, pastoralists, and policy-makers need as many options as possible available to them. This paper introduces the long golden fruit of the much-criticized prosopis tree. Wild prosopis beans are rich in protein, carbohydrates, and essential amino acids, and they were for centuries a staple food for indigenous peoples in the Americas. But in countries where they have been introduced they are not being eaten. The millions of tonnes produced each year are at best browsed by livestock, at worst left to rot. Advances in transforming prosopis into a valuable resource in famine-prone areas in the Greater Horn of Africa are presented, and governments, development organizations, and humanitarian agencies are invited to consider adopting this innovation.