FAO says: 'It's time to put cactus on the menu'

Rome, Italy, November 30 (Infosplusgabon) - Cactus pear should be considered as a valuable asset, especially for food and livestock feed in dryland areas, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Thursday.

FAO says it has gathered experts on the hardy plant to pool their knowledge in a bid to help farmers and policy makers make more strategic and efficient use of a natural resource too often taken for granted.

It said during the recent intense drought in southern Madagascar, cactus proved a crucial supply of food, forage and water for local people and their animals.

The same area had once suffered a severe famine as the result of efforts to eradicate the plant, which some saw as a worthless invasive species. It was quickly reintroduced.

"While most cacti are inedible, the Opuntia species has much to offer, especially if treated like a crop rather than a weed run wild. Today the agriculturally relevant Opuntia ficus-indica subspecies - whose spines have been bred out but return after stress events  - is naturalized in 26 countries beyond its native range. Its hardy persistence makes it both a useful food of last resort and an integral part of sustainable agricultural and livestock systems," FAO said in a statement.

To spread knowledge of how to manage the cactus pear effectively, FAO and International Centre for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) launched Crop Ecology, Cultivation and Uses of Cactus Pear, a book with updated insights into the plant's genetic resources, physiological traits, soil preferences and vulnerability to pests.

The new book also offers tips on how to exploit the plant's culinary qualities as has been done for centuries in its native Mexico and is now a well-entrenched gourmet tradition in Sicily.

"Climate change and the increasing risks of droughts are strong reasons to upgrade the humble cactus to the status of an essential crop in many areas," said Hans Dreyer, director of FAO's Plant Production and Protection Division.

Cactus pear cultivation is slowly catching on, boosted by growing need for resilience in the face of drought, degraded soils and higher temperatures, FAO said.

It has a long tradition in its native Mexico, where yearly per capita consumption of nopalitos - the tasty young pads, known as cladodes - is 6.4 kilograms. Opuntias are grown on small farms and harvested in the wild on more than 3 million hectares, and increasingly grown using drip irrigation techniques on smallholder farms as a primary or supplemental crop.

Today, Brazil is home to more than 500,000 hectares of cactus plantations aimed to provide forage. The plant is also commonly grown on farms in North Africa and Ethiopia's Tigray region has around 360,000 hectares of which half are managed.

The cactus pear's ability to thrive in arid and dry climates makes it a key player in food security.

Apart from providing food, cactus stores water in its pads, thus providing a botanical well that can provide up to 180 tonnes of water per hectare - enough to sustain five adult cows, a substantial increase over typical rangeland productivity. At times of drought, livestock survival rate has been far higher on farms with cactus plantations.

Projected pressure on water resources in the future make cactus "one of the most prominent crops for the 21st century," says Ali Nefzaoui, a Tunis-based researcher for ICARDA, the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas.

FIN/INFOSPLUSGABON/RFD/GABON 2017

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