Senegal harvests and shows that growing wheat is possible

Wheat is after rice the second most consumed cereal by Senegalese bread lovers. Senegal, like other African countries, is entirely dependent on foreign supplies and imports 800,000 tons per year.

Supply difficulties, rising grain prices and inflation caused by the war in Ukraine and the food crisis have stimulated Senegal's long-standing effort to achieve self-sufficiency.

The country harvested wheat this week at a demonstration plot in Sangalkam, a significant step on the path to local production, Amadou Tidiane Sall, a wheat researcher at Isra, a state-owned agricultural research institute, told AFP.

"The sowing was done on January 10. We started harvesting yesterday" on Thursday, a maturity in three months, said Awa Ndiaye Dieng, a researcher at a center in Israel, in Sangalkam.

Four varieties were sown here: three from Egypt, a producing country, a fourth developed by Isra, she says.

Five demonstration plots are being exploited simultaneously on two sites in Dakar and three in the Senegal River Valley with these three so-called "soft" varieties for bread making, and one called "hard" for pasta.

An employee of the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research in a wheat plot in Sangalkam, near Dakar, on April 7, 2023 in Senegal © SEYLLOU / AFP

Hundreds of varieties have been tested, Sall says. Many have proven to be inadequate.

"Others matured after three months, corresponding to our cold season," between January and April, he said.

Consume local

It brushes aside criticisms from local researchers about the incompatibility of wheat cultivation with the local climate.

The experiments showed that "wheat can grow in all types of soil in Senegal, sandy as in Sangalkam as clayey" in the north and valley of the Senegal River, he says.

An employee of the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research harvests a plot of wheat in Sangalkam, near Dakar, on April 7, 2023 in Senegal © SEYLLOU / AFP

The crisis in Ukraine has, according to him, generated more political will "to exploit the results and grow wheat on a large scale".

After his participation in COP 27 in Egypt in November 2022, the Senegalese Minister of Agriculture wanted to draw inspiration from the experience of this country.

"I asked my Egyptian counterpart to give us seeds. Today, here is the result," Aly Ngouille Ndiaye told reporters. On April 1, he visited the plot in Sangalkam with the Egyptian ambassador.

"We have significant potential. We will be able to increase the areas from November 2023" with the participation of private partners, he said. "We will support producers but we must solve the problem of water" for irrigation, he admitted.

The president of the National Federation of Bakers of Senegal, Amadou Gaye, is much more reserved.

An employee of the Senegalese Institute of Agricultural Research in a wheat plot in Sangalkam, near Dakar, on April 7, 2023 in Senegal © SEYLLOU / AFP

"Can wheat be produced in Senegal? I don't believe it," he says. He proposes to devote "more resources to local cereals such as millet, maize and sorghum".

"Of the 2,500 bakeries in Senegal, more than 300 integrate these local cereals into bread making. People are lining up for millet-based bread," he says.

© 2023 AFP