Despite being a sustainable crop that offers amazing nutritional benefits, getting fonio to market was traditionally no easy task. Every step in processing fonio is famously difficult, from harvest to hulling to hand cleaning.
Looking at these obstacles as an opportunity, we at Terra Ingredients decided to take a fresh approach to bringing fonio to the wider world. One of our first steps was to expand strong relationships with the West African farmers who already grow fonio, committing to fair trade, community reinvestment, and the sustainability of the crop.
Supplying The Next Super Grain
A Fresh Approach
For Terra Ingredients, sustainability means a healthy, whole food system: healthy soil, healthy agricultural communities, and healthier consumers. Sustainability for Terra does not mean sustaining a status quo, but actually improving the lives and livelihood of food producers while improving the value provided to its CPG customers.
When Terra first learned of this fonio opportunity, we quickly realized that this was a win-win for our extensive connections with the small-scale farmers and farming groups here in West Africa, and also our food manufacturing and retail customers in North America.
Our Facilities
To handle the challenges of production, we worked with CAA, our local strategic partner, to build a modern processing facility in Dakar, Senegal for processing and dehulling. Here in the US, we work with Stone Mill, our GFSI-certified affiliate, where they conduct final processing. Completed with a chemical-free, 5-log microbial reduction process, our fonio is a super grain with full traceability and the highest possible standards for quality and food safety.
Terra's Commitment
As Peter Carlson, Director at Terra Ingredients, notes, “For Terra, the greatest benefit of fonio is its ability to make meaningful quality-of-life improvements for small-scale farmers in rural West Africa. For these farmers, the ability to sell at a fair price to the North American market provides a meaningful improvement in their lives and livelihoods.”
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