How to Grow Fonio

Digitaria exilis · Also called: White fonio, Hungry rice, Acha, Findi, Fundi, Foundé, Pom, Iburu

Three fonio grains photographed greatly enlarged against a plain background, each a pointed oval with fine lengthwise ribs along a pale straw husk, with a scale bar below marked half a millimetre.

Photo: Jose Hernandez, USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database, Public domain (Wikimedia Commons)

Fonio is probably the oldest cereal in West Africa and it does something no other crop in this library does: it is ready before anything else is. Some kinds are cut seventy to ninety days after sowing, which puts food in the house during the hungry weeks when last year's grain has run out and this year's millet, sorghum and maize are still standing green in the field. That is why it is called hungry rice, and it is not a poetic name. It also grows on shallow, stony, acid, worn-out ground that will carry nothing else, needs no fertiliser at all, and its grain is unusually rich in two amino acids that most cereals are short of. Guinea grows by far the most, with Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin and Togo all producing. Its cost is work: the grain is the smallest of any cereal in the world, and everything about handling it is harder for that.

Growing Fonio, Stage by Stage

1. Get the land ready, and prepare a threshing floor — A rough seedbed on poor ground is enough for the crop, but the clean floor you will thresh on has to be made now.
2. Choose your seed and planting material — Use seed that has rested since last harvest, from a local kind, and take the trouble to clean it.
3. Sow the seed — Broadcast thinly onto the surface at the first rains and cover it barely, because the seed is tiny and cannot climb out of any depth.
4. Water — Fonio is grown on rain alone and its whole reputation rests on needing very little of it.
5. Weeds and feeding — Weeding fonio means telling the crop from its own wild relatives, which is the hardest skill here, and feeding it means not feeding it.
6. Heading and grain fill — The seed heads spread like fingers from the top of each stem, and the crop fills fast because it has very little time.
7. Harvest — Cut a little early rather than a little late, because ripe fonio puts its grain on the ground faster than you can gather it.
8. Thresh and clean on a swept floor — This is where fonio is won or lost, because grain and sand of the same size cannot be separated afterwards.
9. Dehull, store and sell — Pounding the husk off is the great labour of this crop, so store it in the husk and dehull as you need it.

Common Problems & Troubleshooting

If you see: Grain that grits between the teeth when cooked, or that a buyer rejects or downgrades for sand, although it looks clean enough by eye.

It likely means: It was threshed, dried or gathered on bare soil. Fonio grain and sand grains are almost exactly the same size, so once mixed they cannot be separated.

Do this: Prepare a hard smooth clay threshing floor with a low rim, months before harvest, and sweep it immediately before use.

If you see: Seed that was sown into good moist warm soil and simply did not come up, or came up thin and patchy across the whole field.

It likely means: The seed was too fresh. Fonio seed usually has to rest for some weeks after harvest before it will sprout, or it was buried too deep.

Do this: Use seed that has rested since the last harvest rather than seed straight off this year's crop.

If you see: A field that thinned noticeably after weeding, with obvious gaps where somebody worked, and grass weeds still standing.

It likely means: The crop was pulled out and the weeds left. Young fonio and the crabgrasses it is related to look almost identical.

Do this: Learn the difference from somebody experienced before weeding, rather than after.

If you see: Pale grain lying thickly on the soil under the crop before or during harvest, and a lighter sack than the standing crop suggested.

It likely means: The crop was left too long or handled roughly. Ripe fonio drops its grain very readily.

Do this: Cut when most heads are pale straw but not yet fully dry, rather than waiting for the last of them.

If you see: A tall soft crop lying flat across the field after rain or wind, with the heads down on the soil.

It likely means: The ground was too rich, or nitrogen was applied, or the crop was sown too thickly. Fonio stems are very fine and carry no weight.

Do this: Do not apply nitrogen or heavy manure to fonio, and grow it on poorer ground deliberately.

If you see: Sacks of threshed fonio standing unused for months because nobody has the hours to pound it, while the household buys other grain.

It likely means: Nothing is wrong with the crop. Dehulling fonio by hand is genuinely heavy work and it is the real bottleneck in this crop everywhere it is grown.

Do this: Store the grain in its husk, which keeps well, and pound it as you need it rather than all at once.

If you see: Stored grain that smells musty, cakes together, or carries visible mould after a spell of damp weather.

It likely means: It was stored before it was fully dry, or the store lets in damp. A very small grain takes up moisture faster than a large one.

Do this: Dry the threshed grain hard in the sun on mats before storing anything.

Yield & Market Value

Growing the crop is only part of the job. The last part is knowing what a normal harvest looks like where you are, and knowing what your grain is worth before you agree a price with anybody.

Remember It This Way

If you forget every other page of this guide, keep these lines. They are the whole crop, in order, short enough to carry in your head.

Seventy days to food. It is ready when nothing else is.
Poor stony ground on purpose. Do not feed it or it falls flat.
Use seed that has rested. Fresh seed will not come up.
Mix the seed with sand or ash, and barely cover it.
Young fonio looks like crabgrass. Learn the difference first.
Make the threshing floor months before you need it.
Cut when the heads are pale, not when they are dry.
Cut in the cool morning. Ripe grain falls at a touch.
Never thresh or dry on bare soil. Sand cannot be taken out.
Store it in the husk and pound it as you need it.

Test Yourself: Identification

How small is a fonio grain, really?

What is this heap of fine pale grass lying in a field?

Why has somebody built a smooth clay circle with a rim around it in the middle of a field?

Honest Limits of This Guide

Timings are given in days and seasons rather than in months, because fonio is grown across the West African savannah where the rains arrive at very different times. Your harvest comes when the heads pale, whatever the calendar says.
Almost nothing is registered for use on fonio anywhere, and a grass herbicide would kill this crop along with its weedy relatives. This guide therefore concentrates on sowing date, seed rate, hand weeding and the threshing floor, which are what a grower actually controls.
Much of the fonio grown is eaten in the household during the hungry weeks and never reaches a market or a statistic, so national yield figures describe only part of the crop and probably the less important part.
Black fonio, Digitaria iburua, is a separate species grown in parts of Nigeria and Togo. It is handled much like this one, but this guide was written for white fonio and does not claim to cover the differences.

Sources

GBIF Backbone Taxonomy species-match record for Digitaria exilis (Kippist) Stapf — Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), Copenhagen (source)
EPPO Global Database — Digitaria exilis (EPPO code DIGEX) — European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO), Paris (source)
FAOSTAT crops and livestock products — production data for fonio — Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), Rome (source)
Digitaria exilis (white fonio) — CABI Compendium datasheet — CABI, Wallingford (source)

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