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Ethiopia Lifts Ban On Teff Flour Exports With Tight Controls

Ethiopia Lifts Ban On Teff Flour Exports With Tight Controls

Ethiopia plans to begin exporting teff flour, a local food staple, following a 2006 government ban on exports of the gluten-free superfood, but the challenge will be how to get high prices internationally while keeping prices low locally, GeeskaAfrika reports.

An indigenous Ethiopian grain, teff may even overtake the likes of quinoa and spelt in popularity, BBC reports.

Unless it is in the form of cooked products, Ethiopian companies have been prohibited from exporting teff. Instead, Ethiopian entrepreneurs can only export injera — a pancake-shaped bread and centuries-old Ethiopian tradition — and other cooked teff products such as cakes and biscuits, according to BBC. The new initiative will allow exports of milled and packaged teff.

There’s a growing global interest in teff as a superfood, DW reports. Teff’s tiny seeds are high in amino acids, protein, iron and calcium, and they’re gluten-free. Demand is growing in Ethiopia’s large diaspora — cities such as Washington, D.C.

Prized for its flavor, Ethiopian teff will be produced commercially for export under tight government control on 48 farms throughout the country, according to a report in GeeskaAfrika.

The Ethiopian government banned teff exports in January 2006 saying exports caused prices to surge locally, according to a 2013 Food & Agriculture Organization analysis of incentives for teff in Ethiopia.

As it develops its teff export market, the Ethiopian government is considering the trajectory of quinoa, another superfood grain that became popular internationally. The U.N. declared 2013 the International Year of Quinoa.

“Teff is becoming very popular in the international market although it is still at its infancy to reach the level of market items like quinoa, a gluten-free seed,” said Khalid Bomba, CEO of the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency, in GeeskaAfrika.

Quinoa is farmed in Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. Its popularity in the international market was soon followed by inflated prices in places where the seed originated.

Ethiopia plans to prevent inflated local prices by not exporting raw grain and ensuring the domestic supply is not affected, Khalid said. “The case with quinoa will not happen with teff.”

The Ethiopian government has a right to proceed cautiously, DW reported. Teff’s global debut comes after a super grain quinoa hit a global market, growing consumption in affluent countries and making quinoa too expensive for some locals in the countries growing it.

Ethiopian exports will begin from commercial farms and will later expand to smallholder farmers, Khalid said, according to GeeskaAfrika.

International partners will work with Ethiopian authorities to trace the origin of the teff to ensure that it comes from only these commercial farms, Khalid said, according to  GeeskaAfrika.

The Ethiopian teff will undergo genetic testing to validate its DNA make-up and it will have special labeling, said Sileshi Getahun, state minister of Agriculture.

“It has to be known that the teff that is exported originated from Ethiopia,” Sileshi said.

American Matthew Davis is a partner at Renew Strategies, an early stage venture capital company based in Addis Ababa. “Obviously you’ve got the risk of driving up domestic prices of teff, and nobody wants that at all,” Davis told DW. “So I think the government is going to be very cautious about that, and the way they’re going to control that is by giving licenses to a select, controlled number of companies or exporters.”

The teff exported from Ethiopia will be tagged “Ethiopian teff” and companies can put on their own signs in addition to that, Khalid said in GeeskaAfrika. “Once we plant our name in the international market for better quality, we can even get premium value for our teff like Ethiopian coffee.”

Despite teff’s nutritional value, it does have an Achilles heel, Davis told DW. Because it has been limited to growing in Ethiopia, it hasn’t benefited from international agricultural research, he said. Ethiopian farmers haven’t had access to modern farming techniques available to other crops.