Malanga: A Tale of A Tuber

I first fell in love with malanga, a root vegetable, in the summer of 2010. Malanga is not a vegetable I had ever tasted before my first trip to Nicaragua in 2010. It is not a particularly glamorous vegetable.

Malanga: Not a very sophisticated looking tuber.

Malanga likes very wet soil. That makes it a perfect partner crop to coffee. We grow malanga in the valleys between the various peaks on the farm. The coffee grows on the sides of the peaks, but at the bottom, where the water sits, we grow malanga. We also grow malanga next to the rivers that run through the farm. Finally, we grow malanga near the natural springs on the farm. 

The large leaves of malanga are common among plants that live in or near water. Also, malanga likes the sun.

Coffee will not survive in any of these places because coffee needs well-drained soil or coffee fungus will take over.  The soil on the farm is truly ideal for coffee, but malanga is happy to grow where coffee cannot.

A field of malanga. You can see the native old-growth forest behind the sun-drenched field of malanga. Coffee is growing under the canopy of shade.

We returned to Nicaragua in June of 2011, and I was looking forward to finding a woman with a basket on her head to purchase more of those wonderful, crispy malanga chips. Imagine my dismay when all the ladies I stopped (and I stopped more than one of them) had only limp, fragile potato chips for sale! Of course, to be polite, I purchased a little baggie of potato chips from each, but I wasn't interested in homemade potato chips.

Bagging up the malanga in 2010.

Malanga chips were almost impossible to find in the summer of 2011. The photo above is from the malanga harvest in early 2010. Unfortunately, the malanga harvest on our farm in early 2011 was almost zero. It was a dry year, and the malanga didn't make it. If there in not enough rain, the malanga rots. I thought that might have been unique to our farm, but apparently the malanga harvest everywhere failed. Considering how many farmers were relying on malanga crops, it was a horrible year for many.

Quequisque also suffered from the lack of rain. Like malanga, quequisque grows in wet areas. It is also a tuber but it has a more delicate flavor than malanga.

I have looked for malanga chips in the U.S. It seems like something they would sell at Trader Joe's, but I have yet to find them.  There are some other varieties of the same type of plant.  One is called "quequisque", and looks almost the same as malanga on the top, but is more of a delicacy because it has a smaller, more delicately flavored root. 

The entire malanga situation is very sad. If you type "malanga Nicaragua" into Google, you will see a long list of "success stories" of co-ops and international aid organizations touting how they have helped local farmers to increase their sales by growing malanga, rather than lower value crops. I wonder if those aid organizations and co-ops taught the value of a diverse crop. Poverty is a very difficult disease to cure.